


The Bureaucratic Error

by Iniga



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Remus Lupin & Nymphadora Tonks Live, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin Friendship, Sirius Black Lives, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 100
Words: 403,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29970012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iniga/pseuds/Iniga
Summary: After his death, Remus Lupin finds himself five years in the past, having erased Voldemort's defeat and Teddy's birth. His wife has never met him; the Boy Who Lived doesn't remember him. He trusts his old friend Sirius to help him put things right, though Sirius has a godson to raise and demons to face...
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Kudos: 41





	1. The Battle of Hogwarts

The last weeks before his death were among the happiest of Remus’ life. 

Amidst the suffering and the dying and the fear, he had a wry appreciation for the irony of it all. 

He reflected on the world in which they found themselves as he sat in a rocking chair staring at his sleeping son one rainy spring afternoon.

The proverbial writing had long since been on the proverbial wall. There was going to be a showdown between Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter. Probably it would be at Hogwarts. Certainly, Remus would be there at the side of the boy who was the last remnant of his old school friends— the young man who had been grown enough to demand that Remus face his own fears and return to his wife and child.

Thank Merlin for Harry, for so very many reasons. 

He’d worried a bit when Lily had announced that she was pregnant with Harry. He’d worried that this was the first step in his friends moving on to adult lives with careers and families of their own while he would be stuck in time, forever hemmed in by the specter of the wolf. He’d worried that James wouldn’t want him around the baby (though he’d been aware enough to know that James would have been deeply offended if he had ever, ever voiced that fear aloud). Most of all, he’d worried that Harry wouldn’t like him and he would have to drift away from the new little family. Good parents couldn’t continuously inflict the presence of a despised adult on a defenseless child, after all. Childhood was hard enough.

It had all changed the moment he had met Harry. James had dumped Harry into Remus’ arms almost gleefully, proving once and for all that there was no chance that he would be following the law then in effect that forbade interactions between werewolves and young children. Remus had gazed down on Harry’s smooth, delicate face as it glowed with newness. Harry’s lip twitched in an inadvertent imitation of a smile, and Remus had known, right then and there, that he and Harry were going to enjoy each other. The unexpected rush of emotion had not just been the requisite love for his dear friends’ child or the natural instinct of an adult to protect an infant. It had been a genuine feeling of liking for the person that Harry was sure to become.

He’d never told Harry about that. He’d have to make certain that he did if they both lived through the final battle. Perhaps he’d write a letter in case Harry lived and he did not. 

He ought to be preparing for the final battle rather than gazing at his own infant son.

No. No, nothing was more important than these moments with Teddy. Not even keeping his dueling form sharp. He’d kept his dueling form sharp all his life. It was fine.

Teddy’s eyes fluttered open. They were gray today; the color of the sky. The color of the House of Black. The color of Sirius’ eyes.

 _You’d better hope that’s all he inherited from the House of Black,_ Sirius’ voice whispered into his mind. Sirius had been dead for just over two years, and if Remus occasionally imagined what he might say, that wasn't hurting anyone. He’d done it with James, too, in those first years after James’ death. Not anymore—James had been dead now for almost as long as he’d been alive, and for longer than Remus had known him. But he’d thought of James often these past few weeks. The parallels between their situations were inescapable.

James’ son had been born at the height of the first war against Voldemort; Remus’ son had been born at the height of the second war against Voldemort half a generation later. James and Lily had hidden because their son was marked by a prophecy to defeat Voldemort; Remus and Dora hid because Dora and Teddy were considered the blood traitors to end all blood traitors.

 _And I resent them taking that title away from me,_ whispered pretend-Sirius’ voice.

James and Lily had been deliriously in love with each other and their beautiful son. So were Remus and Dora.

James had always liked to use his wand to conjure circles of smoke to amuse Harry. Remus, warmed by the memory, did the same now. Teddy was still too young to grab for the circles, too young even to follow their movements with his half-focused eyes. But when Remus tinted the smoke so it was turquoise, Teddy’s hair suddenly flashed turquoise as well. Chuckling, Remus tinted the smoke pink, then golden, then a deep blue-purple. Teddy kept pace enthusiastically.

Dora entered the nursery, drawn by Remus’ laughter.

“Enjoy it now,” she teased, a smile lighting her beautiful face. “Metamorphmagi are nothing but trouble. Ask me how I know.”

“I’m looking forward to every bit of it,” Remus returned easily. “I hoped he would look like you, and now he can look like all of the yous.” 

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d looked like you.” Dora strode across the room and attempted to perch on the edge of the rocking chair. She slipped and fell to the floor with a pained thud. She tried to hide it, but Remus knew— she’d hurt ever since Teddy’s birth. Her labor hadn’t been complicated, exactly, but Remus would have preferred a healer and a hospital. Those hadn’t been options; Death Eaters would have attacked the moment she’d shown her face (any of her faces) at Saint Mungo’s. 

Remus hurried to settle Dora in the chair with Teddy in her arms while he perched against the windowsill and admired them. 

“Well, I certainly hope he inherits his father’s ability to walk across a room without knocking anything over,” said Dora merrily as the color returned to her pale face. She shifted Teddy in her arms to see if he would nurse. After some hesitation, he did.

“I hope he has your spirit,” said Remus. “And your loyalty. And your openness.” 

“And I hope he has your humor. Your intelligence. Your ability to follow the rules once in a while so maybe he’ll have a shot at making prefect in school.”

“I hope he follows the rules just often enough,” Remus decided.

Dora nodded. “Agreed. And I hope— I hope he has my father’s kindness.”

“Oh, Dora.” Remus slid from the windowsill and let his arms encircle his wife and child. He’d come to the point where he was almost at peace with the deaths of the men and women he had loved, but Ted Tonks’ death was fresh and new and raw for Dora and Andromeda. “I know you miss him.”

“I just wish he could have met Teddy.” Dora blinked back a tear before catching Remus’ eye. “I wish he had had a few more months. I know it sounds greedy, demanding more, when I had him for so long.”

“It doesn’t,” Remus promised.

“How old were you when your mother died?”

“Nineteen. Barely out of school.” Lily had come to the funeral, visibly pregnant with Harry, and someone had made a comment about the circle of life and Remus had wanted to hex her. 

“What do you most hope she gave to Teddy?”

“That’s it exactly.” Dora looked at him curiously. “ _Hope_. That was her name. Hope. And it was just the right name for her. She was a Muggle, and not only did she marry a wizard but she wound up with a werewolf for a son. She was in a world that was entirely alien to her, but she never lost hope. She did everything she could to treat my condition, and to see me educated, and she never made me feel like I was a burden. She was a beacon of energy. You and she— you would have adored each other.”

“I’m sure of it,” Dora agreed. “And when this war is over, I do want to meet your father for more than five minutes.”

“He wants that, too.”

“Maybe we’ll have my mother and your father round our house on alternate weekends so the grandparent time gets evenly distributed.” 

“We won’t want a weekend to ourselves now and again?” Remus asked.

Tonks wiggled her pink eyebrows. “That’s when we send Teddy off to one of their houses instead of having them to ours.”

“I want Harry to see him regularly, too. I don’t want godfather just to be a title. I want Harry to know that he has all kinds of family all over England.”

“Of course Harry is welcome, any day, any night, any time he pleases. We’ll keep his favorite food in the kitchen and hang Quidditch posters in one of the bedrooms. But we’ll have to invite him at first so he knows we mean it. The miserable Muggles who raised him did a number on him. So many good Muggles in the world. My father’s family. Your mother’s family. But Harry got stuck with the worst caricatures you could invent, the sort that give them all a bad name. Like it wasn’t enough that he lost his parents and was stuck with that prophecy.” Teddy, sensing his mother’s agitation, whimpered. Dora made an effort to calm herself. “Gnomes in the garden for Teddy to chase,” she cooed. “I agree with Arthur Weasley. They’re funny.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“And we’ll be close to a school so Teddy can walk or fly there every day until he’s old enough for Hogwarts. Maybe you’ll even teach there? How would you feel about teaching younger children?”

“Unqualified.”

“You’d be brilliant, just as you were with the students at Hogwarts. I never hear the end of it when I meet someone you taught, you know. It’s almost sick-making, the way they all worship you and wish you'd stayed longer than one year.” 

“It won’t matter for the next few years, anyway. One of us will need to be with Teddy most of the time, and it won’t be the most celebrated Auror in Britain. You won’t have any shortage of magical messes to clean up and junior Aurors to train.”

“Will you mind? Being my arm candy house husband?”

Remus laughed. “Not at all.” Once, it would have bothered him. He wouldn’t have been able to believe or tolerate Dora’s insistence that she found him attractive. He would have burned with anger and shame at the thought of letting his beautiful young wife support their family financially. But Teddy’s birth had endowed him with something solid, something stable, something peaceful. He had never believed that having a family of his own was a realistic possibility, and when Teddy had been born happy and healthy and without a trace of the werewolf curse, something inside of Remus has shifted.

 _Besides_ , he reflected as the dark thoughts crept back to take their place alongside the bright ones, he knew perfectly well that there was very little chance that this flight of fancy would ever become a reality. He would fight. He would fight to stay with Teddy and Dora. He would fight to support Harry, Ron, Hermione, and his other former students. He would fight for his fallen friends and colleagues who had already made the ultimate sacrifice for their shared cause. He would fight for the ideals of light magic.

But he was on borrowed time. Almost all of his classmates and colleagues— witches and wizards far braver and more skilled than he— had died in either the first war or the second. Most of the warriors left to fight were children, and he wasn’t about to let them march like lambs to the slaughter without an experienced veteran of the first war against Voldemort to take the lead.

He would protect that army of children if it cost him his own life. He would hope that one day someone else would do the same for his own child. Better yet, he would hope that no one would have to.

It was with a strange blend of of optimism and resignation that he answered the call late that night.

He thanked Andromeda for all she had done for him.

He cradled Teddy’s warm, fragile head with one hand and told him that he would always be loved.

He kissed Dora and reminded her that she had not yet recovered from childbirth and that she was in no condition to fight. He promised that he would take down enough Death Eaters for the both of them. He swore to her that he would do everything he could to come home in one piece because he adored her and was not stupid enough to make the mistake of leaving her twice.

Then he forced the tears out of his eyes and got himself to the rallying place.

* * *

Remus nodded to Kingsley Shacklebolt, half a dozen Weasleys, and a collection of his former students as he strode into the Room of Requirement. Being at Hogwarts had a way of making him feel in control. 

No one seemed to know quite what was happening until Harry appeared at the top of the stairs. “Voldemort’s on his way. They’re barricading the school. Snape’s run for it. They’re evacuating the younger kids, and everyone’s meeting in the Great Hall to get organized. We’re fighting.”

The moment had come at last. 

Or, the moment would come just after Percy Weasley tumbled into the room, loudly confessed his sins, and was sobbingly embraced by his family. It was good, Remus knew. None of them would die estranged. 

Fleur Delacour, bless her veela heart, tried to distract the rest of the group from the Weasleys’ dramatic reunion by demanding an update on Teddy. Remus picked up on her cue and obligingly waved about the photograph he had planned to carry into battle as a talisman. He looked like a madman, but there was no shame in it; Teddy was the most wonderful baby on the planet, and really everyone should have had the opportunity to admire him before the fighting got hot. 

What followed next was a rush of arguments and tears as the younger students begged to be permitted to fight and their parents and professors ordered them to vacate the grounds. Remus quietly helped to convince the younger witches and wizards to save their own lives, all the while knowing that, back at her mother’s house, Dora was growing more and more impatient.

Dora couldn’t be ordered to stay put like an errant child.

Dora was going to rush into the thick of the fight and make herself a particular target for Bellatrix Lestrange.

Dora had trained all of her life for this, and her inability to sit on the sidelines was one of the things Remus loved about her.

It was why he had asked her to stay behind, but hadn’t extracted a promise. He hadn’t wanted her to know on her deathbed, or his, that she had broken a promise to her husband.

He assigned himself the most dangerous task— leading a group of fighters onto the grounds— to little argument. They all agreed that the professors should stay in the school and defend the towers. It was Remus, Kingsley, and Arthur who divided up the twenty most knowledgeable, level-headed volunteers and walked straight into Voldemort’s attack.

* * *

The battle began suddenly, as battles so often did. There was always a long moment of boredom before the instant of sheer terror.

Then the terror gave way to a perverse delight. That delight was what ruined some witches and wizards (and Muggles, too) when a war was over. There was nothing quite like the exhilaration that came when the air was thick with life and death. The world was all at once everything and nothing. His wand cut through the air with joy and pride and power. He moved in concert with the others as if they had never been apart, as if they never would be apart again. There was no past to regret and no future to dread. There was just the moment. 

He flung a masked Death Eater away from one of the others with a simple Knockback Jinx, and that was when Antonin Dolohov stepped into his line of sight.

He wasn’t sure how he knew Dolohov instantly. It wasn’t as if they were old chums, or even old enemies who had spent much time together.

He took a defensive stance. Often, otherwise brilliant duelers could be made to defeat themselves by an opponent who wasn’t too proud to start with a retreat. Remus was all too happy to go backward to go forward.

Sweat soaked Remus’ clothes and dripped from his face. His breathing quickened.

But he advanced.

The tiny part of him that was aware of anything beyond curses and jinxes and counter-curses and moving bodies began to think that he was going to win. That he would take down one of the best duelers in history: the infamous Antonin Dolohov.

And why not him? Why not him, as much as he had learned about the Dark Arts in his life? Why not him, with as much reason as he had to live? 

The battle raged around them, but for Remus and Dolohov there was nothing but their duel. Remus took hits and avoided hits and stayed on his feet. He hit Dolohov and missed Dolohov and watched Doholohov stay on his feet.

He saw the curse he wouldn’t be able to block long before it hit him in the chest.

Like Sirius, he laughed. He laughed at the irony of it all. He should have died as a small boy when Fenrir Greyback had climbed in his window. He should have died when the transformations ripped him limb from limb. He should have died when the some of the cures his parents sought turned out to be worse than the transformations themselves. He should have died when he and his friends had betrayed Dumbledore’s trust. He should have died in the first war against Voldemort. He should have died of grief and poverty when Voldemort had fallen, leaving Harry an orphan and Remus friendless. He should have died so many times.

Instead he died now, with the end in sight, with a beautiful future awaiting him.

It was funny.

* * *

He blinked through a flash of light to find himself in his childhood bedroom. He was fully grown, but nothing hurt. Not only was there no blood from the battle that had ended his life, there were no scars from earlier battles against himself. His skin was smooth. His hair was light brown without a trace of sliver. His face was all but unlined.

He knew, somehow, that he had never become a werewolf.

The room was just as he saw it in his earliest memories. It was beautiful and welcoming and, above all, safe. When he looked at the window through which Greyback had crawled, he saw only a window looking out on a garden full of flowers and trees. There was no threat. There was no desperate father fighting with everything he had to save his doomed son.

The bed was covered by a quilt stitched for him by a Muggle relative. Beside the bed was a chest full of toys. On the walls hung beautiful pictures of happy scenes: kittens tumbling over a ball of yarn, a mist rising from an ocean, a unicorn nuzzling a human child, broomsticks dashing through clouds, a sparkling print of the Hogwarts emblem. The bookshelf strained with volumes both wizard and Muggle. Everything in the room had been chosen with love. 

“Why am I here?” he asked aloud.

 _“Because this was a place of great transition for you,”_ came his mother’s clear voice. He hadn’t seen or heard her for twenty years, but when she sat beside him on the bed it was if they had never been apart. “And now it is time for another transition.”

He sucked in a painful breath. So one could feel pain in this place after all.

“Only if you allow yourself to feel pain,” she said as if he had spoken aloud.

“You can’t be here,” he told her. “You were a Muggle.”

She shrugged gracefully. Everything about Hope Howell Lupin had always been graceful. “I am a part of you, and so I can be here.”

“I’m still inside my mind.”

“And will be until you move on. Or refuse to move on.”

He wanted to linger. He knew it was dangerous to let himself be lulled by the warmth of his own creation. He wanted to linger anyway, to see his mother, to see this place…

Then he felt the call. 

_Harry_.

Harry was doing what he had been foretold to do, and Harry’s very essence was crying out for the people who had given him, in his too-short life, a modicum of what Hope had given Remus. 

“I love you,” he told Hope. “I wish I could stay with you. But I will move on.”

“Go to your Harry,” she said. “He needs you. Let him feel your pride in him as you feel my pride in you.”

Another flash of light, and Remus was back in the forest. He was younger, now, and close beside Lily and James and Sirius. They were as welcome a sight as his mother had been, but he hadn’t the chance to tell them so. This moment was only for Harry.

“You’ve been so brave,” said Lily as she gazed into her son’s eyes, so like her own.

“You’re nearly there,” added James. “Very close. We are… so proud of you.”

“Does it hurt?” asked Harry, sounding like a child younger than his years. The child he had never had a chance to be because as a toddler he had been marked for this moment.

“Dying?” asked Sirius lightly. “Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”

“And he will want it to be quick,” Remus put in with all the reassurance he could muster. “He wants it over.”

Harry’s gaze was fixed on Remus now, and it hurt. It hurt his heart to know that this boy had spent his scant seventeen years of life shoved into a cupboard, unloved, unsupported, battling all nature of demons. He wished for more time for himself, yes, but beyond that he wished for peace for Harry. “I didn’t want you to die,” said Harry. “I’m sorry. Right after you’d had your son, Remus, I’m sorry.”

“I am sorry too,” said Remus, because anything else would have been an obvious lie. “Sorry I will never know him, but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.”

He found some comfort in the words as he spoke them, and fancied that Harry did, too. 

“You’ll stay with me?” asked Harry.

“Until the very end,” said James.

“They won’t be able to see you?”

“We’re a part of you,” promised Sirius.

They stayed until there was a flash of green light and Harry was gone.

Without the tether of Harry, Remus found himself once again in the bedroom in his parents’ house. Child to Lyall and Hope Lupin, not father to Teddy and in-loco-parentis to Harry. He was moving backwards.

He was ready to move forward. He’d faced his fears. He’d faced his death. He could not understand why he was stuck.

“Mum?” he called. 

She returned, but she didn’t feel as bright or as real as before. “Remus. Rest. You’ve had a long day.”

“Yes, what with dying and all,” he agreed. “And watching a teenager for whom I care very deeply die before he ever got a chance to live, I didn’t especially enjoy that.”

She paused as if listening to a voice heard only by her. “Harry lives.”

Remus’ heart leapt in his chest. “How?”

“Voldemort destroyed the Horcrux. He didn’t destroy Harry.”

Remus wanted to jump and cheer and make a fool of himself in a way he had only jumped and cheered and made a fool of himself once before: the day of Teddy’s birth. 

“Harry lives?” he repeated, disbelieving.

“Rest,” Hope replied.

“I will rest when I’m dead. Oh wait, I am dead. Why in Merlin’s name would I need to rest? Why haven’t I moved on? What happened when Harry called me?”

“I’m a Muggle. You know that I am only in your mind.” 

Remus waved a hand impatiently. “Of course.”

“I am also a projection of a force beyond your mortal comprehension.”

“All right.”

“Wizards move on through a realm that Muggles do not. This is why Muggles cannot become ghosts. Werewolves have an added complication, and the boy using the Resurrection Stone to call for you before you had properly passed through the intermediate state has caused another complication,” not-Hope reassured him. She didn’t feel like his mother at all now. “It is only a delay. You chose this place for a reason. Enjoy it.”

“If you won’t let me move on, why not send me back? Give you enough time to sort out your bureaucratic errors. There must be corpses stacked like cordwood at Hogwarts. With Harry alive, who would notice one old werewolf standing up and going home to his son?”

“Dozens of people,” she said. “I’d have to send you back to before you died, and you’d simply fall to Dolohov again.”

“So send me back to before I duel him,” snapped Remus. “Send me back five hours and I’ll practice. Or send me back five months so I can manage not to walk out on my pregnant wife. Or send me back five years, and maybe I’ll keep Voldemort from rising at all. Or—”

But not-Hope, unappreciative of his sarcasm, didn't give him another “or.”

There was a flash of light (Remus was beginning to hate flashes of light) and he was asleep.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This story was originally posted on ff.n, but I removed it due to my low tolerance for criticism. Luckily I can just turn reviews off on this site. In addition to not wanting to hear in excruciating detail about how much you hated this fic, I also don't want you to read a fic you hate in the first place! So here are a few warnings:
> 
> 1\. This is not a Harry-centric fic and is definitely not an overpowered Harry fic. He's present and has some POV-chapters, but the story belongs to Remus and Sirius.
> 
> 2\. This is a gen fic. There is some Remus/Tonks content, but the romance is at best secondary. As for Harry and friends, I acknowledge canon attractions but they'll still be teens at the end of the story; no marriage or permanent pairings. Please imagine them marching into the sunset in whatever combination you wish.
> 
> 3\. This fic could probably be 100K words shorter, but I indulged in some digressions. Feel free to skim. Do not feel free to contact me and lecture me about outlining my fic properly.
> 
> 4\. I've been accused of being a Dumbledore-basher and a Dumbledore-apologist. I've been accused of writing Sirius as too hard and too soft. I've been accused of writing Remus as too confident and too anxious. So I'll just claim my characters are complex and trying their best.
> 
> 5\. I actually like Severus Snape. However, at the point of canon divergence, Remus believes that Severus murdered Dumbledore. He proceeds to behave accordingly. I get it if Severus is your favorite and you can't stomach that... so you've been warned.
> 
> 6\. Still with me? I truly hope you enjoy. This story was written during a global pandemic. We could all use some enjoyment.


	2. The Prisoner of Azkaban

Remus was, if possible, more disconcerted than he had been the first time this had happened. He was on the Hogwarts Express, not as a student, but as a professor. 

Was he alive? Dead? In between? Dreaming? Hallucinating? Was this a test? A punishment? A reward?

The train rumbled beneath him; the children trembled; the dementor sent chills through his blood. Remus’ instincts took over. His father had been an expert on non-human spiritous apparitions, and it had been from him that Remus had learned as a very small boy that in matters such as this, the strong always protected the weak. Full stop. 

He called for the children to be quiet and let a ball of flames slide into one hand.

The dementor looked him in the face, as much as a dementor could. “None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go.” He remembered saying that the first time; he remembered the pain that had lingered under his words.

He remembered that words had been useless. They generally were, with the likes of dementors. 

He raised his wand to cast a Patronus (non-corporeal of course— he might have been changed by Dora and Teddy and death itself, but he still wasn’t putting his inner wolf on display for the world without a very good reason) and the dementor retreated.

Remus turned to see Harry semiconscious on the floor. His heart twisted in his chest. Harry looked so painfully young: small and skinny and innocent. This was the man who in less than five years would save the world? 

This was the man who would save Remus’ marriage and family with a well-placed boot up his arse.

_“My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon he’d tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us? I think you’re feeling a bit of a daredevil. You fancy stepping into Sirius’ shoes. I’d never have believed it. The man who taught me to fight dementors— a coward.”_

Remus turned his back on the children and the memory and reached into his briefcase to retrieve the chocolate he’d known he would find there. He didn’t particularly remember distributing it the first time, and he certainly didn’t remember packing it, but no competent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor got onto a train that was likely to be stalked by dementors without a supply of chocolate. 

He might have been a coward from time to time, but he had _never_ been incompetent. 

He began to distribute the chocolate, explaining as he went. “That was one of the dementors of Azkaban. Professor Dumbledore was concerned that they might pay a visit to the train, and so he asked me to ride along with the students just in case.”

“What’s a dementor?” Harry asked.

“Only one of the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself. Soulless and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life." 

Every one of them— Ron, Hermione, Harry, Neville, and Ginny— stared back at him. There was no recognition in any of their faces. They didn’t know him. He was just a strange, rumpled man with strong feelings about certain dark creatures and a briefcase full of sweets like a Muggle criminal might use to lure an unsuspecting child into his car.

Remus tried to soften his tone. “The chocolate is an antidote. You should eat it. Particularly you, Harry. The worst experiences of your life were, to understate the matter, rather awful. Through no fault of your own, you give the dementor a lot to work with.”

There was a flicker of gratitude and understanding in Harry’s eyes amidst the ravages of embarrassment. At least Harry wouldn’t waste any time wondering why he was the only one who had passed out. (Though Ginny and Neville, unless Remus missed his guess, had come awfully close to joining Harry on the floor.)

“Excuse me,” he told the children. “I need to speak to the driver.”

He passed through the train, checking to see that chocolate frogs were distributed liberally, particularly in compartments where the students were looking particularly pale. He spoke briefly with the driver, owled his report to Dumbledore, and managed to look up from his work just in time to catch a glimpse of the castle as it came into view.

It was the sight of the castle, more than anything else, that convinced him that this was real. Not a dream, not a hallucination, not a test.

He had really and truly managed to travel five years into the past. 

_“Feeling a bit of a daredevil. You fancy stepping into Sirius’ shoes,”_ taunted the Harry from the future-past. Harry had sacrificed everything and had defeated Lord Voldemort.

And Remus had destroyed that sacrifice.

Remus, who prided himself on protecting those who could not protect themselves, had allowed the Dark Lord to rise again by tampering with the timeline.

He was suddenly struck by a wave of dizzy exhaustion and grabbed at the side of the train for support. 

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. He’d been feeling clever and witty and energized with the delicious feeling of being beside James and Sirius and Lily again. He’d been giddy with relief that Voldemort would finally be defeated. He hadn’t quite shaken the soaring feeling that had been his companion ever since Teddy’s birth.

The train shuddered to a stop. It took everything in Remus not to fall, and he was grateful when Ron took it upon himself to carry the abandoned briefcase off the train. “I wasn’t sure if it would go to your office the way our trunks go to our dormitories.”

“Thank you, Ron.”

Ron swung around, puzzled. “How do you know my name?”

It was lucky that Remus was a good liar, and a quick one. “Professor Dumbledore asked me to familiarize myself with the students before I arrived. I don’t imagine you often meet anyone who wasn’t at school with someone from your family.”

Ron nodded, accepting that. He was used to everyone knowing at least one of his older brothers. “So you were a Gryffindor?” 

“Well, as a professor, I no longer take sides. Naturally.”

Ron returned Remus’ sly smile with one of his own and rushed off to rejoin Harry and Hermione.

* * *

The Great Hall was breathtaking. When he’d last seen it, it had been a battlefield. Now it was a work of art lit by candles and the enchanted ceiling. The long rows of tables full of chattering, eager students were a sign that everything was just as it should be. 

Best of all, at the center of the head table was Albus Dumbledore, surveying the throng with twinkling eyes. 

Dumbledore, who never missed much of anything, noticed that Remus was watching him and beckoned him closer. Remus couldn’t stop a smile from splitting his face as he obeyed. “Headmaster,” he said, as he clasped the old man’s hands with his own, “You have no idea how good it is to see you well.”

“If anyone is going to be fretting about anyone else’s health, Remus—”

Remus shook his head. “I look worse than I am.”

“Well enough to battle dementors, at least. I received your message.” Dumbledore shook his head. “I don’t like this at all, but one has to let the Ministry have its way once in a while.”

For the first time, Remus wondered if perhaps he had been part of a trade Dumbledore had made with the Ministry. _If you must have dementors on the grounds, you can at least let me hire a werewolf._

“It’s too early in the term for you to be thinking so hard,” Dumbledore directed gently. “Take your seat and enjoy the Sorting and the feast. This will be your last chance to relax for longer than you think.”

“Yes, Headmaster,” he agreed easily, still smiling like a fool. He might have irreparably changed history for the worse, but _Merlin_ it was good to see Dumbledore alive and in his element. As he made his way toward the end of the table, Dumbledore called his name once more. Remus looked a question over his shoulder.

“It is good to see you smile.”

Remus didn’t know whether he’d smiled much the first time around. He remembered being embarrassed at how shabby he’d looked next to the other professors in their best robes. He remembered feeling terribly awkward calling his former professors, now colleagues, by their first names. He remembered how welcoming they had all been, with the exception of Severus, who had glowered at him with all the hate he could no longer direct at James and Sirius.

Now he watched Severus take his place near Dumbledore, and was completely unprepared for the rush of rage that coursed through every inch of his body. 

He remembered that last Christmas before the Ministry had fallen and the members of the Order had gone completely to ground. Harry had locked eyes with him in Molly Weasley’s sitting room.

_“Do you honestly like Snape?” Harry asked._

_“I neither like nor dislike Severus,” he said, as Harry didn’t even bother to try to hide his skepticism. “No, Harry, I am speaking the truth. We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps, after all that happened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usually do at the full moon.”_

He’d meant it at the time. He’d insisted that Harry’s loathing of Severus Snape was nothing more than James’ blood and Sirius’ tutelage. He’d repeated, and not for the first time, that Dumbledore trusted Snape and that to trust Snape was to trust Dumbledore.

Harry, seeing that he would get nowhere, had changed the subject.

And all along Harry had been right.

Not for the first time, Remus saw Dumbledore falling to his death in his mind’s eye just as if he had been there. 

Not for the first time, Remus remembered Harry’s recitation of Dumbledore’s reasons for trusting where others didn’t.

_“I’d love to know what Snape told him to convince him,” mused Dora as they gathered around Bill Weasley’s sickbed. Fenrir Greyback had claimed another victim._

_“I know,” said Harry, and Remus turned with the others to look at him. “Snape passed Voldemort the information that made Voldemort hunt down my mum and dad. Then Snape told Dumbledore he hadn’t realized what he was doing, he was really sorry he’d done it, sorry that they were dead.”_

_Remus stared at Harry in disbelief, feeling more like a fool than he’d felt in a long, long time. “And Dumbledore believed that?” he asked incredulously. “Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead? Snape hated James…”_

Then, after Dumbledore’s funeral, the hard, hot battle to remove Harry from his aunt and uncle’s home for the last time.

Mundungus Fletcher had come up with a rather unexpectedly brilliant plan to mask Harry’s escape by making use of decoys. Six of Harry’s friends had drunk polyjuice potion; George Weasley had been Remus’ assigned partner. George, of course, had had had no shortage of jokes about the plan— how demeaning it would be to sit behind Remus on a broom when he flew so much better than Remus possibly could in his wildest dreams. (Remus had nonchalantly pointed out that that was also true of the real Harry Potter.) But Remus had been delighted to partner with George, who for all his reputation as a prankster was strong and talented, loyal and clever.

They’d taken off into an immediate ambush. Voldemort had flown directly at Mad-Eye Moody, prompting Mundungus-as-Harry to undo any respect he was owed for proposing the decoys by Disapparating. Voldemort switched his attention to Kingsley and Hermione; Bellatrix, of course, was chasing Dora and Ron. 

Just as Bellatrix sought her oldest and most personal enemy, so too did Snape. His hood flew off in the chaos as he swooped closer, closer to Remus and George, and he’d shouted the curse that had always been his particular favorite— the curse that had prompted Remus and his friends to keep a supply of blood-replenishing potion in the dorm room at Hogwarts.

_“Sectumsempra!”_

Remus was immediately drenched in blood, and to his horror none of the blood was his. George, always so ready with a quip or a laugh, faded from consciousness and began to slip from the broom. 

Remus had no chance to return Snape’s fire. He could only hope to keep flying in the right direction, keep George on the broom, and make a safe landing before George bled to death…

George had taken the news that he would spend the rest of his life with a hole where his ear should have been in stride. 

_“… Saintlike. You see, I’m holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?”_

Remus let his eyes dance along the length of the Gryffindor table until they found the Weasley twins somewhere around the middle. He couldn’t tell Fred and George apart from this distance, but he could tell that they were whole and healthy, and, of course, laughing.

“You’ve already been warned about the Weasley twins, then?” squeaked a pleasant voice in Remus’ ear. Professor Flitwick had come to sit beside him. 

“Their reputation does proceed them. I’m sure they can’t wait to see what they can get away with with the newest professor.” 

“I can’t imagine that you would have any particular problem with them, not after you spent your own school years running round with James Potter and—”

Flitwick broke off. It would doubtless be the first of many times that Sirius’ name would hang in the air, unspoken, wherever Remus went. 

Remus was spared from responding when the Sorting began with the usual song and a bright-eyed boy named Bradley. “One of yours,” Remus whispered to Flitwick.

“ _Ravenclaw_!” shouted the Hat.

“Well-spotted,” whispered Flitwick out of the corner of his mouth as he applauded. “But these next two are for Severus.”

It was, of course, a time-honored tradition for everyone in the Great Hall to guess what the Sorting Hat was going to do before it did it. The tendency for Houses to run in families being what it was, a true surprise was rare. (When Sirius had been Sorted, half the room had booed from pure shock, leaving the rest of the first years waiting in even more terror than usual.) It was really only the Muggle-borns and the children with parents who had come from different Houses who presented any sort of challenge.

“Another of yours,” said Remus as a lanky boy called Chambers let the Hat fall over his eyes. The Hat took its time deciding.

“I think he’s Minerva’s,” Flitwick murmured, not wanting to be too obvious about what they were doing. “The complicated cases are always Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.”

“ _Ravenclaw_!” shouted that Hat.

“Not that I’m not glad to have him,” Flitwick added hastily, and Remus smiled warmly, knowing it was true. 

Letters D through G consisted of a run of students anyone could have guessed, and Remus and Flitwick applauded politely as Astoria Greengrass strolled confidently to the Slytherin table to join her sister Daphne. 

“I don’t believe you’ve missed yet, Remus,” said Flitwick. Remus shrugged modestly. He knew that he should miss on purpose, his unfair advantage being what it was, but he was having too much fun. “A box of ice mice to you if you get this next one.”

“How can I miss with something like that on the line?” Remus wondered aloud. “Obviously a Hufflepuff.”

“ _Hufflepuff_!”

“And this next one’s a Gryffindor, if you’d like to go double or nothing.”

“You’re on!” Flitwick sat up straighter in his chair.

“ _Gryffindor_!”

Toward the end of the alphabet, Remus finally missed a “guess;” he had honestly forgotten where Adrienne Szczerbiak had been Sorted, quiet girl that she was. Flitwick took more pleasure than was strictly necessary in this, even though Remus had told him that he relieved him of all ice mice obligations.

The Sorting wrapped up with Romilda Vane (Gryffindor of the worst kind), and Remus was so relaxed by his “triumph” that he hardly noticed Snape’s glare as Dumbledore presented him to the students.

There would be time enough to worry about Severus later. For now, there was the feast.

* * *

The first staff meeting of the year was before breakfast the next morning. The overly excited students had barely closed their eyes; Remus doubted that many of the professors had been to bed at all. Exhaustion with an undercurrent of resignation permeated the staffroom.

Remus had always rather liked the long, paneled room full of mismatched chairs. Today he had deliberately chosen one with a hard, straight back. The professors who had chosen the low, cozy armchairs were fighting sleep.

Everyone, however, sat bolt upright when Dumbledore swept into the room. At well over one hundred years old, he had twice as much energy as everyone else combined and a way of sharing that energy without reservation.

“Yes, I know it’s early and that this is the beginning of a long, hectic week. Unfortunately, we have not had an opportunity to gather and discuss the special circumstances surrounding the school this year, and I thought it prudent that we do so as soon as possible.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Everyone, including Remus, was suddenly completely engaged, all thoughts of the lost hour of sleep forgotten.

“I don’t suppose that overnight the Ministry of Magic changed their minds and determined that the dementors will do far more harm than good?” asked McGonagall as Dumbledore took his seat.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled humorlessly in her direction. “Alas, there has been no such word. The students have been warned, directed, and begged to stay away. Any student caught disobeying should be punished immediately and reported to me. No exceptions.” 

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Those of you who can produce a Patronus would do well to practice it. A corporeal Patronus is not necessary to dissuade them.”

Everyone nodded in agreement again. 

“I have made it clear to both the Ministry and the School that I do not care for this method of handling the situation, but I fear that we have no recourse until such time as Sirius Black is captured or killed.”

Remus’ stomach sank. He’d watched Sirius die once; he had no desire to experience that again. And the delicate word “captured,” which stood in for “has his soul sucked from his body” was even worse.

“You all right there, Lupin?” asked Snape silkily.

All eyes turned to stare at Remus. He did not relish being the center of attention before he had even decided what, if anything, to do with his five years’ of ill-gotten knowledge. 

“Perfectly fine, Severus,” he said nonchalantly. “Thank you for asking.”

“We all understand how difficult it must be for you to have such divided loyalty. On the one hand, you would like to protect the school and its students. On the other hand, protecting the students means the end of your old friend Black. Perhaps it would be better if you recused yourself from this meeting.”

“My loyalties are completely undivided,” said Remus into the thick silence of the staffroom. He remembered again the feeling of George Weasley’s blood soaking his robes, and summoned all of his restraint to stop himself pointing out that the only reason Severus Snape didn’t have friends in Azkaban was that Severus Snape didn’t have _friends_.

“If Sirius Black burst into this room right now, you would summon the dementors?”

“If Sirius Black burst into this room right now, I daresay that a dozen Hogwarts professors would be able to subdue him without calling a soul-sucking creature into a castle full of children, some of whom don’t yet know which end of their wand to hold.”

“So you admit that you don’t wish to see the esteemed Mr. Black receive the dementor’s kiss?”

“I admit that I don’t wish to see the lowest scum who crawls this earth receive that particular punishment, and that does include the man who murdered Lily and James Potter, who you will recall were also my friends.”

If he hadn’t been looking for it, he would never have noticed that Snape reacted, ever so slightly, to Lily’s name. 

“I trust everyone in this room, and everything that needs saying about the dementors has been said. Is that correct?” Dumbledore injected at last.

There was a murmur of assent.

“Then please set an example for your students by being on time for breakfast and your first classes.”

The faculty rose as one. 

All through breakfast, Remus felt eyes on him. The faculty remained unfailingly polite, but he couldn’t help but notice that not one of them had spoken on his behalf when Snape had accused him of remaining loyal to Sirius.

It was somehow hurtful even though it was true.

_**To be continued.** _


	3. The Prisoner of Azkaban 2

The first weeks of classes were somehow just as frantic as they had been the first time around. To be sure, Remus spent considerably less time learning names and personalities. He was no longer adjusting to the disconcerting sensation of being teacher rather than student. And, unlike every other inhabitant of the castle, he had no concerns that Sirius Black might break in at any moment hell-bent on committing murder.  
  
Instead, he worried about finding a way to bring about the demise of Lord Voldemort without eliminating his own unborn child from existence.  
  
He periodically thought of confessing everything to Professor Dumbledore, but he knew that Dumbledore would not take a story that must necessarily include accusations against Severus Snape seriously. Dumbledore would sigh and tell Remus that he ought to be more open-minded than his school friends had been, especially when Snape had agreed to brew Wolfsbane Potion every month.  
  
So for the foreseeable future he was on his own.  
  
The first step, he was sure, was stopping Peter Pettigrew from returning to his master at the end of the school year. That would give them all more time to put measures in place to keep Voldemort from gaining power. That would give them more time to destroy the… Horcruxes?  
  
He knew the word but he couldn’t precisely define it. Harry had never told him just what Dumbledore had asked him to do, but he could make a decent guess. Everyone in the wizarding world who didn’t bury his or her head in the sand knew that Voldemort hadn’t been human enough to die in 1981, and there were a limited number of ways that one could go about becoming simultaneously more immortal and less alive.  
  
There was no reference to Horcruxes in the restricted section of the library; it was, doubtless, the kind of thing one learned more about in the private library at Grimmauld Place. Probably Sirius knew, but Remus and Sirius weren't going to be having in-depth conversations about megalomaniacs and dark magic until Pettigrew had been exposed.  
  
And so Remus invited his third-years to bring their pets to class for a discussion of ways in which magical animals could, themselves, defend against the Dark Arts. He knew well that Ron regularly took “Scabbers” to class in his bag or his pocket even without a specific invitation, but on the appointed day, Ron’s desk stood empty amidst a sea of cats and toads.  
  
“Where’s your rat, Ron?” he asked in a tone he hoped was mildly inquisitive enough to conceal the pounding of his heart.  
  
“No idea,” said Ron with annoyance. “Scabbers is the laziest rat you’ve ever seen, never runs off at all. I told him last night that he had to be ready for class today, and I couldn’t find him anywhere this morning. It’s like he heard me.”  
  
And Remus knew right then that for the rest of the year, Scabbers wouldn’t allow himself to be found anywhere that Remus might be.  
  


* * *

  
  
Remus made a point of wandering down to the Forbidden Forest on occasion. That in and of itself wasn’t particularly suspicious; a professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts might well find inspiration for a class there.  
  
Unfortunately, everything else he wanted to do would be so suspicious that he’d be thrown out of the school immediately, and Severus Snape hailed as a hero for recognizing a traitor when he saw one.  
  
He couldn’t call out to Sirius that he knew that he was innocent.  
  
He couldn’t leave palatable food and a wand he’d procured from the Room of Requirement’s collection of hidden things lying about.  
  
He could only hope that Sirius would choose to approach him, but if Sirius was aware of his presence at all, he decided to stay hidden.  
  
Both of his old school friends were going to avoid him as long as possible, it seemed.  
  
It wasn’t entirely comforting to know that, if all else remained unchanged, they were destined to meet at the end of the year in, of all places, the Shrieking Shack.  
  


* * *

  
  
He was half-tempted not to take the Wolfsbane Potion Snape brewed, knowing as he did how deeply misplaced Dumbledore’s trust in Snape would turn out to be.  
  
In the end, it wasn’t the knowledge that Snape hadn’t poisoned him the first time around or the promise of a great relief from pain that prompted him to take the potion. It was only the fact that he had promised to protect the students by rendering himself sane during the full moons. If he declined the potion, Dumbledore would be wise to ask him to leave, and he couldn’t leave.  
  
For one thing, he had to teach Harry the Patronus Charm.  
  


* * *

  
  
Just as had happened the first time, Sirius broke into the castle on Halloween.  
  
(Just as had happened the first time, Remus was helpless to do anything about it, a prisoner of the wolf and the full moon.)  
  
Just as had happened the first time, Harry nearly caught his death when dementors invited themselves to his Quidditch match.  
  
(Just as had happened the first time, Remus was helpless to do anything about that, either. But it did result in Harry coming to him for extra lessons.)  
  


* * *

  
  
Over the course of the first term, it had been touching to see how fond Harry had grown of the stranger Remus was to him. He wasn’t sure that he had properly appreciated it in the past, so concerned had he been with his own insecurities.  
  
Now he thought it was downright adorable when Harry tried to warn him against drinking anything Snape offered him. The urge to protect came naturally to Harry; Remus didn’t think it had anything to do with his being trained up as the so-called Chosen One.  
  
He was ashamed, he had to admit, that he had let Harry take the lead with him so often. He had told himself that he didn’t want to push Harry, didn’t want Harry to feel any obligation to his father’s old friend.  
  
Really, he’d been afraid of Harry’s rejection.  
  
He should have written letters every week when Harry spent a year in the Triwizard Tournament.  
  
He should have told Harry stories about Lily and James every day instead of waiting for Harry to ask.  
  
He should have been more than a professor to James’ son far sooner than he had been.  
  
He would do it right this time.  
  


* * *

  
  
In his first Patronus Charm lesson, Harry tumbled to the floor twice in a row, teary and dizzy with the memory of his parents’ deaths.  
  
“I heard my dad,” Harry mumbled as he revived. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him— he tried to take on Voldemort himself, to give my mum time to run for it…”  
  
“You heard James?” Remus would have preferred that he didn’t sound strangled. He sounded strangled.  
  
“Yeah.” Harry looked up, pretending that he hadn’t been crying. “Why, you didn’t know my dad, did you?”  
  
“I did, as a matter of fact. We were friends at Hogwarts. Listen, Harry— perhaps we should leave it here for tonight.”  
  
“No!” Harry demanded another go, and then another, and finally Remus refused.  
  
“You’ve made excellent progress, but you’ve had enough for one night.”  
  
“Just one more—”  
  
Remus handed Harry a bar of chocolate and forced the boggart back into its case.   
  
“Professor Lupin,” said Harry. “If you knew my dad, you must have known Sirius Black as well.”  
  
“What gives you that idea?” If Snape had been dropping hints about his loyalty to the students, Remus needed to know.  
  
“Nothing. I mean, I just knew they were friends at Hogwarts, too.”  
  
“I’m surprised that anyone told you that,” said Remus. He seated himself atop the desk and gestured for Harry to sit beside him. Harry did, with an eagerness that warmed Remus’ blood in the drafty classroom. And yet, Harry was conspicuously silent. “Oh, so no one did tell you about your father and Sirius. You— er— overheard?” Doubtless with the aid of a certain invisibility cloak.  
  
“Yeah!” said Harry much too quickly. “I didn’t mean to overhear, but I did, and I have a picture of my parents’ wedding, and I never looked at the best man before, but— well, he doesn’t look the same as he does on the wanted posters, but that’s him, isn’t it?”  
  
“It is indeed. Azkaban has never been known for improving upon anyone’s good looks.”  
  
“What was he like then? When you were in school?”  
  
“Sirius? Or James?” Harry looked desperately torn, and Remus decided not to give him a chance to answer. “I’m not going to tell you about Sirius. You don’t need to worry about him. I will worry about him, and the Headmaster and the other professors will worry about him. You have enough to concern you without taking that on.”  
  
“But he as good as killed—”  
  
“I will tell you about James.”  
  
Harry fell silent instantly.  
  
“I think that one of the reasons that the Patronus Charm will be a challenge for you— aside from the fact that it is very advanced magic, well beyond Ordinary Wizarding Level— is that hearing your parents’ voices is a bit of a double edged sword.”  
  
Harry stared at the floor, still silent.  
  
“Of course you don’t want to relive their deaths,” Remus continued, his voice cracking slightly. “But you don’t have any conscious memories of their voices, and when the dementors draw near you—”  
  
“I won’t let that stop me from learning! I have to learn the Patronus Charm, or we won’t have any chance against Ravenclaw and we’ll lose the Quidditch Cup!”  
  
“I have complete faith that you will learn the Patronus Charm. I only wanted to offer you a… a small compensation for part of what you’ll lose when you stop hearing your parents’ voices. At the end of every lesson, I will tell you one story about one of your parents. That’s only if you want to hear, of course.”  
  
Harry nodded enthusiastically. Merlin, Remus had made a mistake not doing this when he’d first had the opportunity.  
  
He realized too late that he didn’t have any stories about James at the ready that wouldn't have outsize Sirius-shaped holes in them if he told them now— unless of course he wanted to tell stories that required him to out himself as a werewolf.  
  
“Well, we’ve talked about your father,” he began slowly, to buy himself time. “Let’s talk about your mother.”  
  
Harry nodded again, his mouth full of chocolate and his eyes trained on Remus.  
  
“Lily was never one to let anyone else tell her who her friends were. She was not going to be friends with someone just because he was popular or handsome or smart or anything else. At Hogwarts, we Sort first years and tell them that their house is their family. Lily took that as a suggestion, and then she proceeded to choose her closest friends from every house but her own.”  
  
“Not Slytherin,” said Harry around his chocolate.  
  
“Are all Slytherins so awful?”  
  
“The ones I know are.”  
  
Remus swallowed a laugh. “I daresay if you spoke with every Slytherin in this castle, you'd meet one or two you liked.”  
  
“I’d get hexed and spend the rest of the year in the hospital wing before I got halfway through trying to talk to every Slytherin in school.”  
  
This time Remus couldn’t swallow the laugh. “You’re quite right, of course. I didn’t have any friends in Slytherin when I was your age, either. As I say, it was something that made your mother unique.”  
  
“Wasn’t it lonely for her if she didn’t fit in in her own house?”  
  
“I didn’t say that at all. She got on well with her roommates and many of the Gryffindors. But she wasn’t around her own common room or dining table as much as most students are, so I didn’t know her as well as you might expect when we both became prefects in our fifth year.”  
  
“Was my dad a prefect too?”  
  
“Can you imagine someone making Fred or George Weasley a prefect?”  
  
Harry snorted.  
  
“Well, that’s why James wasn’t a prefect. Besides, he wanted to spend his time playing Quidditich, not patrolling the castle.”  
  
“But he was Head Boy. I have a picture where he’s wearing the badge.”  
  
“That came later. At the beginning of our fifth year, your father still rolled his eyes at the idea of following a rule instead of breaking it. When Lily and I were sent out to collect some second years who had been serving detention with Hagrid at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, James did not begrudge us. I didn’t entirely want to do it myself. I felt like I’d been made a prefect in error. I didn’t say it out loud, of course. I’d spent four years in classes with your mother, but we’d barely had a discussion that extended beyond the various uses of gouging spells.  
  
“I didn’t say anything, but she knew. She grabbed me by the wrist and told me that we were very busy and important and we were going to get the second years safely home. All of a sudden it was an adventure, not a chore, and it was something I was completely capable of doing. She was always like that. Very kind, universally kind until she saw an unkindness. She made everyone around her feel more confident and included. I imagine you get that from her.”  
  
“People always tell me that I’m like my dad,” mused Harry.  
  
“I suppose it’s all right for you to be like both of them once in a while.”  
  
Harry shrugged. Remus continued.  
  
“The second years had somehow commandeered a container of ice cream. They weren’t supposed to have it, but we didn’t have the heart to give them more detention, so we had them wash it down a sink when we got back to the castle. Unfortunately, we hadn’t figured on the nuts in the ice cream clogging up the sink, and soon enough Peeves got involved.”  
  
Harry grinned. “Then what happened?”  
  
“Rather than wait for Mr. Flich to discover us, your mother solicited help from the potions master. That was Professor Slughorn. He was the Head of Slytherin House at the time. Lily was a magnificent potions student, and he told her at least once a month that she really ought to have been Sorted into his house.”  
  
“But she was a Muggle-born!”  
  
“Professor Slughorn had his flaws, but he wasn’t a pureblood fanatic. In any case, he spun a story that Lily must have gone easy on the second years just so that she could have an extra lesson with him, and really she should have been a Slytherin. She was standing in two inches of filthy water, her robes and hair soaked, a mess that was really of our own making, and she said, ‘yes, Professor, I have to agree that at the moment I look just like someone who belongs in Slytherin.’”  
  
“What did he do?” asked Harry eagerly.  
  
“Same thing he always did. Laughed and gave her a point for her cheek. He adored Lily. But then, almost everyone did.” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “It’s past time for you to be getting back to your dormitory.”  
  
Harry slid from the desk to the floor with his usual athletic grace. “Yes, Professor.”  
  
“Do not wash any ice cream down any sinks on your way back.”  
  
Harry grinned. “No, Professor.”  
  


* * *

  
The later lessons were easier. Harry never seemed to mind if the “stories” about his parents were often conversations that began with one simple fact. James had particularly enjoyed enchanting the suits of armor to march around the castle singing songs of his own composition. Lily had introduced half the school to Muggle music— the Beatles in particular. When James ended up in the hospital wing after a nasty Quidditch accident, he had all but pulled his friends into his bed with him, wanting reassurance that they’d managed to survive without him for two days but completely unconcerned about his own health.  
  
Remus loved the after-lessons chats at least as much as Harry did. He’d loved the adult Harry he’d left behind, but the child Harry was so charming and so funny and so strangely innocent that he half-hated to know that he would grow up again.  
  
Before he knew it, the end of the year was near.  
  


* * *

  
  
Remus awoke on the last day of exams more nervous than he had ever been as a student. (And he had sometimes been rather nervous as a student, always wanting to live up to the faith Dumbledore had shown in him by admitting him in the first place, always wanting to make his parents proud when they had rebuilt their lives around his illness.)  
  
It wasn't that he was afraid to stand over the fourth years while they wrote essays on the Unforgivable Curses or untangle the sixth years if they got a little too enthusiastic as they dueled one another.  
  
It wasn’t even that it was the night of the full moon— or at least, it wasn’t just that.  
  
It was that this was the day that, more than any other, would demonstrate whether he had changed history for the better, or for the worse, or even at all. If things went as they had the first time, this would be the night that both Wormtail and Padfoot would show their human forms.  
  
This time, he wasn’t going to let Wormtail escape. He wouldn’t let Sirius murder their old friend, but Wormtail wasn’t going to be trusted to walk to the castle under his own power either.  
  
This time, he wouldn’t leave the Marauder’s Map lying on his desk so Snape could interrupt them and make things even more complicated than they already were.  
  
This time, he certainly wouldn’t let himself turn into a bloodthirsty monster with no control over his own head.  
  
Late afternoon found him waiting outside Snape’s office door before the Snape had even released his final class. Snape’s gaze narrowed when he saw Remus. Snape wordlessly opened the door; Remus entered and sat down without an invitation.  
  
Remus suppressed a shudder as he glanced around at the jars of slimy, venomous, and otherwise disgusting potions ingredients that lined the walls. He had never liked potion-making even as a student, and as an adult he wondered if it took a certain sort of personality to thrive at it. Horace Slughorn hadn’t been a Death Eater, to be sure, and he certainly would never have murdered Dumbledore. But he had devoted his life to basking in the reflected glory of the acquaintances he groomed for his “collection” from the time that they were children. Like Snape, Slughorn had never hidden his preference for the students who least needed his help.  
  
Snape carefully inspected the potion that was simmering slightly over the lowest of flames. One careful stir, one last sprinkle of aconite, one wave of his wand, and then the potion was smoking in a goblet.  
  
If it had been anyone but Snape, Remus would have been mesmerized by the attention to detail and the minuscule margin of error. Snape was a bigot and a killer who devoted his life to bullying children and holding grudges, but the man was also an artist and a genius.  
  
“Last time, Lupin,” said Snape as he handed Remus the goblet with a tenderness that no doubt stemmed from his respect for his potion rather than his compassion.  
  
“For this year at least,” Remus returned mildly. He took a sip of the potion. It tasted terrible, as always, but he was going to miss it over the summer months. He hoped against hope that by the next full moon he would have the only other thing that had ever helped control his symptoms: Padfoot.  
  
Snape’s lip curled. “You know that no one has ever held the Defense Against the Dark Arts position for more than a year since before we were students. Since before the Dark Lord himself put a curse on it.”  
  
Remus grimaced as he took a second swallow. “Perhaps the werewolf curse balances out Lord Voldemort’s curse.”  
  
Snape’s features went taut, as if Remus had said Voldemort’s name aloud for the sole purpose of offending him. (Of course, Remus called Voldemort by name on principle; offending Snape was just a bonus.) “I should think you’d be happy to have me stay for a second year, Severus,” Remus offered.  
  
Snape raised his eyebrows in disdain as only Snape could. “Why in Merlin’s name would that make me happy?”  
  
Remus toasted Snape with the goblet before taking another swallow. “Isn’t it better to have a colleague who is completely dependent upon you rather than one who is working for Lord Voldemort?”  
  
“I would almost prefer to have a colleague who had the Dark Lord attached to the back of his head to one who would walk out the front door and bring Sirius Black into the castle if he could.”  
  
“Almost, but not quite.”  
  
“So you don’t deny that you would bring the most wanted fugitive in all of the wizarding world into this school?”  
  
“I neither confirmed nor denied it, Severus,” said Remus mildly. “But we weren’t talking about Sirius, we were talking about you. Not only do you know my darkest secret, that secret puts me at your mercy.”  
  
“It isn’t precisely _my_ pity— excuse me, mercy— if the Headmaster requires me to brew the potion.”  
  
“All right,” agreed Remus, pretending that the taunt about Dumbledore pitying him didn’t sting even after death should have made him a bit more wise. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that one day the Headmaster will come to his senses and allow you to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. We both know that that day is not today. Wouldn’t it be preferable to have me give your future students some kind of background in the subject? You’ve no guarantee that my replacement wouldn’t be another Gilderoy Lockhart.”  
  
“Thankfully, there is only one Gilderoy Lockhart, and he is safely locked away.”  
  
Remus almost laughed.  
  
If Snape weren’t a relentless bully destined to murder Albus Dumbledore and turn Hogwarts over to the Death Eaters, Remus might have found something to like about him, the legacy of James and Sirius be damned.  
  
He left the empty goblet on Snape’s desk and stood up. “In case we don't get a chance to say farewell before the term ends, thank you, Severus. I’ll see you on September first.”  
  
Snape rose, too. “You have over a week left in which you may get yourself sacked, get yourself committed, or get yourself killed, Lupin. Do not underestimate your ability to do any of those happy things.”  
  
Remus was forced to concede that Snape wasn’t wrong as he settled into his office with the Marauder’s Map and waited for Sirius and Peter to make their appearances.  
  
Soon enough, they did.  
  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	4. The Shrieking Shack

Remus took the map, and the spare wand he had stolen from the Room of Requirement, and ran. He picked up Harry’s invisibility cloak at the mouth of the Willow and sped toward the Shrieking Shack.  
  
The scene was just as he remembered it from five years before— he hadn’t noticeably damaged this part of the timeline, at least.  
  
But that was going to change. For the better. _Good damage. Good damage only. Lives saved. Wrongs righted. Injustices washed away._  
  
This was not the time to ponder whether his plan was delusional, not with the full moon rising, dementors swarming the castle grounds, Peter plotting his escape, Ron lying on the floor with a broken leg, and Harry aiming his wand at the heart of a broken-but-not-beaten Sirius.  
  
 _Merlin_ , the absence of Sirius had settled into Remus’ being like a permanent physical ache.  
  
But it was Peter he needed to get under control, and right now.  
  
“Where is he, Sirius?” Remus asked quietly.  
  
There was a long pause— had it taken this long the first time, or had Remus just been busy figuring out what in the name of everything magical was going on?— before Sirius pointed at Ron.  
  
“Ron,” said Remus in his most professorial voice, “Do you think I could have a look at your rat?”  
  
“What’s Scabbers got to do with it?” demanded Ron.  
  
“Everything,” said Remus.   
  
“The man who killed Harry’s parents and escaped from Azkaban is right there, and you’re worried about a rat?” Ron asked.  
  
“Precisely,” said Remus.  
  
“Don’t do anything he asks,” suggested Hermione from where she’d been hovering in the shadows. “Harry, maybe you’d better—”  
  
“Maybe you’d better lower your wand,” Remus interrupted. He really didn’t want to disarm the children this time around; he knew perfectly well that Harry wasn’t going to murder anyone, not even the man believed to have betrayed his parents. In the future-past, Harry had eventually gotten to the point where Remus had _wished_ he’d been willing to cast a spell more aggressive than _Expelliarmus_ once in a while. “You don’t want to hurt someone by mistake.”  
  
“If I hurt him, it won’t be by mistake,” growled Harry.  
  
“If you were going to kill him, you’d have done it by now. Why not listen to what he has to say, what we have to say, and if you still want Sirius dead half an hour from now, I imagine he’ll hand himself over to you.”  
  
“What can you possibly have to say that would make me change my mind?”  
  
“Lower your wand.” Harry did so begrudgingly. “And you,” Remus added, turning his attention to Ron. “Hold onto the rat. If he moves, I will stun him.”  
  
“That’s all you’re planning to do? Stun him?” Sirius demanded.  
  
“I’d like to have him testify before the Wizengamot, and he can’t do that if we’ve killed him, as tempting as that may be.”  
  
Wormtail gave a squeal and wrenched himself out of Ron’s grasp. “ _Petrificus Totalis ,_” Remus snapped. Wormtail froze.   
  
“When I suggested not stunning him, I didn’t mean body bind him instead,” muttered Sirius.  
  
“If I’d stunned him, he might not have heard what we have to say. I think he needs to hear what we have to say, don’t you, Padfoot?”  
  
“Padfoot…” murmured Harry thoughtfully.  
  
With Peter immobilized and the children, at least for the moment, willing to listen, Remus turned to the business of scraping Sirius off the ground and pulling him into a hug. Sirius laughed a little, and Remus was forcibly reminded of the last time he’d seen Sirius alive. Laughing then, too, of course. _“Come on! You can do better than that!”_ he’d taunted Bellatrix, his voice echoing around the room as the jet of red light caught him in the chest.  
  
Remus gripped Sirius more tightly and forbade the tears to come to his eyes. Sirius returned the hug and dropped his head to Remus’ shoulder, just for an instant. Sirius was giving himself over to Remus, but not for long, not all the way.   
  
“Don’t see why you’re so set on letting the Ministry screw things up again.”  
  
“I am set on keeping you alive, free, and with your soul attached to your body,” Remus answered. “Easier with a live witness.” He gave Sirius a final squeeze before letting him go and turning to address Harry, Ron, and Hermione. “We have less than half an hour and there is a lot that we need to explain to you, so please pay attention.”  
  
“Why do we have less than half an hour?” asked Sirius. “If there’s some kind of deadline, I want to kill him now.”  
  
“The moon is full,” Remus reminded him. Sirius’ skeletal hand briefly brushed the back of Remus’ neck in sympathy.   
  
“They want my pet rat to testify before the Wizengamot, and we can’t talk for more than twenty minutes because the moon is full. Am I the only one who realizes they’re both mental?” Ron asked Harry and Hermione.  
  
“The full moon is a problem because Professor Lupin is a werewolf,” Hermione told him. Harry and Ron both jumped, and Hermione looked hard at Remus. “I hope your explanation was going to include that.”  
  
Remus nodded. “It’s going to begin with that.”  
  
 _“Why are we listening to an escaped prisoner and a werewolf?”_ Ron demanded, more loudly.  
  
“He’s a very good professor, though,” said Hermione. “The first decent Defense Against Dark Arts professor we’ve had. We learned loads for once, and that’s the class we need the most, you know. And werewolves aren’t dangerous if they take Wolfsbane Potion properly, which I imagine Professor Lupin has.”  
  
“Yes,” Remus confirmed. “I have, but I’d still rather not have you anywhere near me when I transform.”  
  
“I think it would be fascinating.”  
  
“That’s what concerns me.”  
  
“How did you know he was a werewolf?” Harry asked Hermione.  
  
“He always gets sick around the full moon, and when boggarts see him they turn into the moon.”  
  
“Hermione is very clever,” Remus told Sirius needlessly. “Thank you for not telling anyone,” he added in Hermione’s direction.  
  
“I’m not sure I was right,” she answered tightly.   
  
“Then let me explain.” Sirius and Ron were both glowering at him, both ready for the talking to be over. He told the story more smoothly and succinctly than he ever had before. His unexpected admission to Hogwarts. Being swept up in a friendship with the two most popular, powerful boys in his year. The Animagus transformations. The long nights in the woods. The rift created by Sirius’ prank, and the utter loathing Severus Snape bore him to this very day. The last-minute Secret Keeper switch, and Peter Pettigrew’s betrayal of his friends.   
  
He let Sirius take over and describe recognizing Peter’s rat-form, complete with missing toe, in the Daily Prophet and escaping with the goal of protecting Harry.   
  
“Show us,” said Harry. “Show us that Scabbers is really Peter Pettigrew.”  
  
“Gladly,” rasped Sirius.  
  
Remus flicked the spare wand at Sirius, who caught it deftly. On the count of three, they forced Wormtail from his transfigured state.  
  
Remus’ stomach turned as he looked at the man before him. “Hello, Peter. Long time, no see.”  
  
Peter didn’t even bother trying to make a case to Sirius, not that Remus blamed him. “You don’t believe him, do you, Remus? He tried to kill me! He’s come to try and kill me again! He killed Lily and James, and now he’s going to kill me too!”  
  
“No one’s going to try and kill you,” said Remus. “We considered it, but we’d much rather have you alive to prove that Sirius is innocent.”  
  
“Sirius, innocent? He was Lily and James’ Secret Keeper! You knew that! Everyone knew that! James trusted him above all others! If they changed the plan, he would have told you!”  
  
“Not if he believed I was the spy,” said Remus quietly. That still hurt.  
  
“Why would he believe such a thing?”  
  
“Forgive me,” Sirius interrupted, ripping his gaze from Peter for the first time. “Please forgive me, Remus.”  
  
(And they said Blacks didn’t apologize.)  
  
“Not at all, Padfoot,” said Remus. It hurt, but he had long since forgiven Sirius. “And will you forgive me for believing you were the spy?”   
  
“Of course,” said Sirius.  
  
(And they said Blacks held grudges until the end of time.)  
  
“But why would you have thought Professor Lupin was the spy?” Harry asked, looking earnestly at Sirius.  
  
Remus didn’t give Sirius a chance to answer. “I told you that I was surprised to have friends when I came to Hogwarts. I was stunned when they discovered my secret and decided that we were still friends. I was so grateful… I was so disbelieving… that I could never argue with James or Sirius when I thought they were wrong. I told you, Harry, months ago about why I was a prefect and your father was not.”   
  
Beside Remus, Sirius made a rough sound in his throat, as if he were caught between reliving an old joke and grieving for a tragic misjudgment.   
  
“The whole truth,” Remus continued, “is that Professor Dumbledore wanted to see if making me a prefect would allow me to exert some control over James and Sirius’ more… dangerous antics.”  
  
“That wasn’t why. He was rewarding you for being a good boy, same as every other prefect in the history of the school.”  
  
“In any event, James and Sirius did things that any prefect should have told them to stop, and I didn’t. Sirius knew I couldn’t stand up to him, and Sirius assumed I couldn’t stand up to Lord Voldemort either. And because Peter is not stupid, he did everything he could to sway Sirius’ opinion without Sirius even realizing it. Correct, Sirius?”  
  
Sirius nodded.  
  
Harry looked sympathetic. “Professor Dumbledore says that standing up to your friends takes as much bravery as standing up to your enemies.”  
  
“I’m glad you know that already,” said Sirius. “Bit of a nasty shock for me, the way I learned that particular lesson. I mistook obsequiousness for loyalty and fear for cowardice.” He glanced at Remus again. “You seem just fine with ordering me about now.” He pointed at Peter. “You’re sure you won’t let me kill him?”  
  
Remus rolled his eyes. Peter cringed.   
  
“Do you three have any other questions for Peter before we stun him and bring him up to the castle?” Remus asked the children.  
  
 _“I let you sleep in my bed!”_ exclaimed Ron. It wasn’t precisely a question, but Remus agreed that Ron had every right to say it.  
  
“I was a good friend! A good pet! You’re a kind boy, you should believe me when I—”  
  
“If you made a better rat than a human, Peter, that isn’t much to brag about!” Sirius snapped.  
  
“And it does beg the question of why an innocent man would choose to spend twelve years as a rat,” Remus agreed. He glanced at Ron. “Or why, when you told your rat that he was invited to Professor Lupin’s class the next day, he suddenly vanished as if he’d understood you even though he never ran off.”  
  
Ron nodded, pale with the memory.  
  
“You suspected?” Sirius asked Remus sharply.  
  
“I did, but without proof I had absolutely no chance of convincing anyone else.” He turned his attention to Hermione. “You’re quiet, Hermione. Any objections to taking Sirius and Peter to the castle? Any questions?”  
  
“How are we going to get Mr. Pettigrew back to the castle without him transforming and running off, and how are we going to get Mr. Black inside the castle when the doors know not to let him in, and how are we going to avoid the dementors, and how are we going to make sure those horrible Ministry people who killed Buckbeak will listen to us?”  
  
“Excellent questions, Hermione,” said Remus.  
  
“She your favorite student, Professor Moony?” asked Sirius, sounding almost amused.  
  
“Harry’s his favorite,” said Hermione quickly.  
  
“That’s different,” said Ron. “He’s known Harry since he was born.”  
  
“With the unfortunate twelve-year gap in between,” modified Remus. “I’m going to stun Peter hard enough that he won’t wake up until well after you’ve reached the castle.”  
  
“No!” objected Sirius. “If you won’t let me commit the murder I’ve been imprisoned for, you can at least let me stun him.”  
  
“We’ll stun him together,” agreed Remus cooly. “Make sure it takes.”  
  
Sirius wordlessly raised his wand, and Remus followed suit. At their unified “ _Stupefy_!”, Peter collapsed to the floor.   
  
“Now,” said Remus to Hermione. “Your next question. Sirius will be able to pass through the doors because Sirius will be invisible.” He pulled Harry’s cloak from beneath his robes and passed it to Sirius. Sirius’ eyes brightened at the sight of the cloak. “Be more careful with that in the future, Harry. Anyone could pick it up if you drop it, and you won’t find it easy to replace.”   
  
“The dementors will still be able to sense him even if he’s invisible,” said Hermione.  
  
“And that is why Harry is going to walk out of the tunnel first. Harry, I want you to cast your Patronus before you even step out of the tunnel, whether you see dementors or not. You know how much harder it will be if you start to feel their effects before you try to cast the spell, and there’s no guarantee that Sirius will be able to cast magic that complex with a wand that isn’t his.”  
  
“Right,” agreed Harry.  
  
“Hermione, you can cast _mobilicorpus_ and float Mr. Pettigrew back to the castle?”   
  
Hermione nodded.  
  
“And Ron,” Remus concluded. “Your job is to go straight to Madam Pomfrey and let her mend that leg for you. I’ll bind it well enough for you to get to the hospital wing. Ferula.”  
  
Ron stood and gingerly tested his weight on his broken leg. “Thanks,” he said.  
  
Remus nodded briskly as a shudder ran down his spine. “Now. Go. Harry first, then Hermione with Peter, then Ron. Ron, keep your wand on Peter and do whatever you have to do if the stun wears off.”  
  
“Believe me, I will.”  
  
“Sirius, stay invisible and stay behind them.”  
  
“You really don’t have a problem telling other people what to do anymore, do you?”  
  
The next shudder was more emphatic, more frightening. “Go!”   
  
“Stay safe,” murmured Sirius quietly, and he went.  
  
Remus ripped off his clothes and huddled into himself, straining to hear the footsteps retreating down the tunnel until the transformation took hold.  
  
When the pain and confusion was over, even the wolf’s sharp ears heard nothing.  
  
He could only wait and hope.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Many quotes from Prisoner of Azkaban and one from Order of the Phoenix in this chapter. “Wait and hope” is the last line of The Count of Monte-Cristo, the title character of which is of course the model for Sirius Black.


	5. Sirius, Caught

Getting through the tunnel was slow work. The steadiest member of the party was Crookshanks, who led the way with his bottlebrush tail held high.   
  
As soon as the Whomping Willow’s branches stilled (courtesy, of course, of Crookshanks), a too-familiar chill swept over them.  
  
“No," whispered Sirius, in spite of himself, in spite of the need to be confident for James’ son and his friends.  
  
"Not now," muttered Ron just in front of him. Ron resolutely tightened his grip on his wand and glowered more intently at Pettigrew’s unconscious form. Sirius liked him just a bit better for it.  
  
Dementors—and more than just a few—were heading towards them. "They must have gotten all excited by Buckbeak's execution!" snarled Hermione.  
  
“Expecto Patronum,” Sirius tried, but he had no real expectation of success. _There’s no guarantee that Sirius will be able to cast magic that complex with a wand that isn’t his,_ Remus had said, the damn know-it-all. Tactfully, Remus had left out the bit where Sirius was thirteen years out of practice when it came to doing most magic. Worse, he was thirteen years out of practice when it came to having happy memories.  
  
Ten feet ahead of Sirius, Harry glanced over his shoulder and for a fleeting second their eyes met through the darkness. Sirius knew perfectly well that Harry had Lily’s eyes, but in that instant all he saw was James.  
  
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Harry bellowed. The jet of light that shot from his wand was not fuzzy or indistinct as Sirius might have expected from a thirteen-year-old. Instead, it formed a fully formed corporeal Patronus that charged what felt like dozens of dementors.  
  
At first it looked as if it might be a horse, then a unicorn, but then it turned its head.  
  
It was a stag.  
  
The dementors retreated, and the stag cantered back toward Harry. He raised one hand to pat it as it faded and vanished.

"Prongs," Sirius whispered. Left to his own devices, he might have stood there all night staring in awe at the place where the stag had been.  
  
"We'd better go in," said Ron, interrupting his thoughts.  
  
Sirius nodded and pulled the invisibility cloak over himself. He followed Harry, Ron, and Hermione right through the front door of the school without incident.  
  
It was late; the corridors were empty, and Hermione was spared having to explain why she was levitating an unconscious, rat-faced, thirty-something man in front of her with a scowl on her pretty face. She had a real skill with a wand; there was no denying that. Sirius could have done with her being less skilled, come to think of it. Pettigrew deserved to have his head slammed into a wall or two.   
  
Harry brazenly approached the headmaster’s door as if he had been there many times before— which, Sirius realized, he probably had. Harry began randomly guessing at passwords.  
  
"Lemon drop,” Harry told the gargoyle. “Chocolate frog. Pepper Imp. Sugar quill. Chocoball—"  
  
This last was apparently correct, because the wall split in two and revealed a moving spiral staircase. When they all reached the top— regretfully, Hermione’s wandwork had proven equal to the task and Pettigrew still hadn’t smashed into anything— Harry rapped at the door.  
  
"Who is it?" asked Dumbledore. He sounded weary.  
  
It was time for Sirius to stop hiding behind teenagers and answer for himself. He divested himself of James’ cloak and handed it back to Harry.  
  
"It's the mad mass murderer Sirius Black, and he's come to turn himself in."  
  
The door opened.  
  
Dumbledore looked as weary as he had sounded, but as he observed the strange scene before him, his energy seemed to return.  
  
"I thought it was you," he told Sirius. His eyes probed Sirius’ as if trying to read his mind, which raced with the idea that _c oming here was a very bad idea and he should have just killed the rat when he’d had the chance. _"Why now?”  
  
"I'm ready to be caught," said Sirius as cooly as he could manage. "I'm happy to be caught as long as my supposed victim" and he pointed at Pettigrew, who was just beginning to rouse "can't cause any more damage.”  
  
Dumbledore's keen gaze swept from Pettigrew to Sirius and back again.  
  
Sirius managed to stumble through the same explanation he’d given in the Shrieking Shack. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, having heard the story once, couldn’t stop themselves from helping out here and there, and Sirius was grateful. He demonstrated his Animagus abilities for a thoroughly unimpressed Dumbledore. At least Harry and his friends seemed to be impressed now that they didn’t think he wanted to kill them all.  
  
As they finished, another knock sounded at the door. "Come in, Minerva," Dumbledore called with a flick of his wand. Professor McGonagall entered. Her beady eyes widened as she took in the scene. "Please take Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, and Miss Granger to the hospital wing," Dumbledore ordered.  
  
Harry and Hermione might have gotten away with their objections that they were just fine, thank you, if Ron hadn’t joined in. The bind Remus had put on Ron’s broken leg had been good, but it wasn’t meant to hold up under the stress of scrambling all over the castle and the grounds. “The students had better spend the night there. Mr. Weasley's leg looks as if it could do with Poppy's touch,” Dumbledore continued. “Please return when they have been seen to, but in the meantime I wish to speak to Mr. Black and… Mr. Pettigrew alone.  
  
Professor McGonagall made to usher them out, but Harry stopped hard. "You won't let the dementors have Sirius, will you?” he asked Dumbledore.  
  
"The dementors will not be coming any closer to the castle.”  
  
"Will Sirius be staying _in_ the castle?" Harry pushed, even though Hermione hissed " _Harry_!" under her breath.  
  
Dumbledore, though, chuckled. "Sirius will stay here until this has been sorted out. I believe that enough innocents have been punished tonight, don't you?”  
  
Harry nodded tightly. He and his friends followed Professor McGonagall out of Dumbledore's office.   
  
  


* * *

  
As soon as they were alone, Dumbledore drew his wand and pointed it at Sirius’ chest. Sirius didn’t bother to reach for the borrowed wand. If the most powerful wizard in the history of the world wanted him dead, then he had no chance with his own wand, let alone a substitute. (Where the hell had Remus gotten it, anyway? Sirius could tell that it had never been Remus’ own; he and Remus had never been able to do much more than cast _lumos_ with one another’s wands, and this one seemed to work decently enough for him.)  
  
"I have to do this, Sirius," Dumbledore told him in what Sirius would have liked to consider a soothing tone of voice. He had long since lost the ability to differentiate subtleties in tone and body language. "I promised Harry I would see this sorted out, and I promise you the same. But I can't risk you transforming.”  
  
A wave of magic flashed over Sirius, and he staggered backwards into a chair. Instinctively, he tried to become the great dog and found that he could not.  
  
"Are you able to change your form?”  
  
Sirius tried again, then shook his head. "No," he croaked. His last defense was gone.  
  
Dumbledore reached for a small, round object on his desk. Almost instantly, two house-elves appeared. "What is Headmaster Dumbledore wanting, Sir?" squeaked one happily.  
  
"Breakfast, please, and a set of robes for our friend." He gestured at Sirius.  
  
"Is Sirius Black!" shrieked the other elf in fear.  
  
"He will not harm you. Please do as I ask," said Dumbledore. The fearful elf vanished as suddenly as he had come, and the other elf stood at attention, overly large ears and eyes trained on Dumbledore. "Take him to the bath. Help him with anything he needs.”  
  
"Yes, Sir!" One section of the round office swung backwards, and Sirius found himself directed toward it.  
  
In all the occasions he had been sent to Dumbledore's office as a student (and there had been many, many, many, many occasions), Sirius had never seen the wall open. If his long-deprived senses had not been overwhelmed, he might have been very pleased to see what the rest of the Headmaster's rooms looked like. As it was, he numbly allowed the elf to tug at his filthy prisoner's robes and fill the tub with bubbly water.  
  
The robes fell to the floor with a puff of dust. Sirius coughed, and in an instant a glass of juice was at his lips. The juice felt strangely powerful as it slid down his throat and into his stomach, which lurched in response.  
  
He had been bathed by an elf as a small child, he recalled, and then he and Regulus had delighted in splashing each other until the elf had snapped her fingers and kept them restrained at opposite sides of the tub. Now he felt those same restraints holding him still as an enchanted sponge slid over his body. The water blackened quickly, and the elf snapped her fingers to clear it.  
  
"Does Mister Black want his beard shaved, Sir?”  
  
Sirius stared at the elf. He knew that she had spoken, but he could not make sense of her words. His skin was raw except where it burned from Harry's and Remus' touches. He could hear snatches of Peter's voice, and while he wanted to listen his body seemed to be shutting down.  
  
There was a crack, and most of Sirius' beard vanished along with most of his long hair. "Is fleas," the elf said, and Sirius did not really understand that, either. A comb whipped through his suddenly-clean, suddenly-short hair, and a towel draped itself about his shoulders.  
  
As he stood, Sirius caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He knew that the reflection had to be his own; he was alone in the room with the house elf, and only Dumbledore and Peter were around the corner. The reflection's limbs were skeletal and shook as water dripped off of them. His cheeks were hollow and his stomach concave; his ribs were pronounced. Gone were the muscles that had once broadened his shoulders and chest.  
  
The elf pulled a robe— soft, black, and nondescript— across Sirius' body. Sirius hardly paid attention. He had found something on which he could focus, and that was food. It appeared to be eggs and fruit, but that hardly mattered. He did not have to scavenge for it. He wanted it.   
  
He reached for the plate and ate as quickly as he could. Force of habit led him to eat what he could, when he could, before it vanished. He didn’t bother with the silverware despite remembering how to use it. Azkaban had taken plenty of memories, but Black Family Dining Etiquette Lessons regrettably had not been among them.  
  
"Only as much as you can handle, Sirius." Dumbledore was beside him again, his voice soft. "You will have more later. Your body has had a great shock.”  
  
Sirius nodded, not so much because Dumbledore's words made any more sense than the elf's as because some part of his body knew instinctively that that was the appropriate response.  
  
"Lie down." The command was simple and abrupt, and that Sirius understood, although he had no idea how he had come to stand before a bed.  
  
He buried his face in the pillow, and suddenly a thousand thoughts crowded his mind.  
  
"Go to sleep."  
  
His eyes sprang open and his breath quickened. He could not remember the last time he had slept as a human. It had not been in the past decade. Once more, he tried to transform and found himself blocked by the spell Dumbledore had placed on him.  
  
Harry was screaming that Sirius had killed his parents, and then glancing behind himself at Sirius like the reincarnation of James, and Petunia Evans was standing on Platform 9 ¾ with an expression on her face that confirmed she would never be kind to her sister's son, and James was there because they were twenty years in the past and Sirius had not killed him through his own hubris and had not failed to protect the only grandchild of the people who had been parents to him when his own parents had refused, and Remus was asking if Sirius had thought him the spy because they were back in their own time where Dumbledore was telling him to sleep and there were more voices outside.  
  
Sirius sat up. Minerva McGonagall had returned and was consulting with Dumbledore in hushed tones. There was a third voice, too, but he had to see its source before he recognized it as belonging to Poppy Pomfrey. "Do what you can for him," Dumbledore commanded the nurse, and then he commanded Sirius, again, to lie still.  
  
Sirius twisted on the bed to stare at the nurse. Something in her eyes was most unprofessional, but not at all unkind. "What happened to the other boy?"  
  
"Other boy?" she repeated.  
  
"The other boy. Ron," Sirius remembered. "What about his leg?"  
  
"His leg will be as good as new by the time the moon sets." Her eyes bore into his for a moment longer, and then she seemed to come to grips with herself. "Close your eyes so I can mend the cuts on your face." Sirius obeyed. "Lie on your stomach." Reluctantly, Sirius obeyed once more. Cuts sealed themselves, bruises vanished, and muscles relaxed, only to tense again as he felt the nurse's wand and fingers on his spine. "Sit up. Drink these."  
  
"What are they?"  
  
"Pepper-up potion and lung-clearing potion.” As long as he had been following instructions for what seemed like hours, and what might actually have been hours, he drank the potions. "Now, try to sleep."  
  
They kept coming back to that one. Sirius did not care to obey, but he did not have the energy to argue. Instead, he stayed still and tried to listen to the others.  
  
McGonagall's voice was easy to pick out. Many years of controlling her students had given her the ability to make herself heard in the next room even when she spoke softly. "Let me see him, Albus.”  
  
"I don't know if you want to, Minerva." That was Pomfrey.  
  
"I know quite well what I want." Her voice, like the nurse's, was rather choked. If Sirius had not known better, he would have thought her greatly upset, nearly to the point of losing control. Professor-slash-Deputy-Headmistress-slash-Head-of-Gryffindor McGonagall did not lose control. All through his years at Hogwarts, he had never once laughed at his jokes even though he was absolutely positive that she secretly thought he was hilarious.   
  
"What's the matter with him?”  
  
"He's in markedly good shape for having lived like an animal in the forest for a year after twelve years of torture. The cuts and the bruises and the cracked ribs heal quickly enough. I don't know the extent of the damage from the infections or the starvation. I don't know how the potions will affect him. The psychological damage . . . twelve years with the dementors! He wasn't much more than a teenager when he was sent to Azkaban. It's a wonder he's as lucid as he is.”  
  
"And you're quite certain that he is innocent, Albus?" McGonagall continued.  
  
"He can't have murdered Peter Pettigrew if Peter Pettigrew isn't dead," Dumbledore sighed. "I attempted to probe Sirius' mind. His thoughts are so convoluted that I was unable to confirm that he was telling the truth. Peter's story was much clearer. He confirmed that he cut off his own finger and cast the spell that destroyed the street. He confirmed that he sold James and Lily to Voldemort.”  
  
"When are you planning to involve the Ministry?"  
  
"Tomorrow. I want to hear what Remus has to say first.”  
  
“Cornelius won’t be happy when he learns that you waited half a day to contact him.”  
  
“Cornelius won't be happy in any event. He will not be eager to announce publicly that the wrong man was imprisoned twelve years ago, and that he was sent to prison without so much as a trial. Sirius was not the only one convicted without being allowed to speak on his own behalf. Cornelius will be terrified by the potential public reaction. I need to know as much as possible about what went on tonight and thirteen years ago before the Ministry becomes involved. I would hope to have both Sirius and Peter tried before the full Wizengamot with the Daily Prophet and Wizarding Radio present. The facts need to overwhelm the biases of the Ministry completely. I find it frightening that a hippogriff was beheaded tonight on the testimony of one boy."  
  
"Not just any boy.”  
  
“And yet, Sirius is facing greater hurdles than the son of a powerful man who bears a grudge.” Dumbledore changed the subject abruptly. “Poppy, I know you want to return to your other patients. Have you any further instructions as regard Sirius?”  
  
"I'll see him again tomorrow— later today. I'll see how the potions affected him then.”  
  
“Remember, you will not have much time. Minerva is quite correct that we will have to contact the Minister sooner rather than later.”  
  
Madam Pomfrey murmured her assent and left the room.  
  
“Minerva,” Dumbledore said when they were alone but for their eavesdropper. ”I want you to stay here. Do not let anyone in. Do not remove the spells around Peter. He needs to remain in condition to confess. As for Sirius . . . .”  
  
"I had seven years' experience dealing with Sirius Black," said McGonagall. She tried to make her tone light. She failed miserably.  
  
"It was a lifetime ago. For him, certainly. Let him rest, if he will. I do not have him restrained, but if you find it necessary—”  
  
"I won't, I'm sure.”  
  
Something in the far reaches of Sirius' mind told him that he ought to have found that amusing. Although he did not remember clearly, and although he was overwhelmed with a numbing exhaustion, he knew that once upon a time Minerva McGonagall had occasionally been inclined to agree with Argus Filch when he suggested that restraints were the only way to deal with Sirius and James.  
  
James, again. His head grew heavier still. He no longer needed dementors to show him images of James in pain, James dying, James betrayed by his best friend's stupid plan, James' son an orphan. He could see James’ cold, accusing stare all on his own.  
  
"I'm going to meet Remus, then," Dumbledore told McGonagall. "I want to speak to him before anyone else does.”  
  
McGonagall nodded crisply. An instant later she was inside the room where Sirius, having given up pretending to rest, sat on the bed.  
  
He had been right, he realized with some surprise. She did look as though she were on the verge of tears. His eyes met hers, but he did not know what to say to her. "Whatever it is, I didn't do it," was no longer appropriate. He had done it. All of it. Killed James. Killed Lily. Orphaned Harry… who had somehow grown up to be magnificent.  
  
"Do you need anything?" she asked.  
  
Again, his body seemed to know the appropriate response before his brain did. Or rather, his body knew the inappropriate-but-well-practiced response, which involved equal parts of sarcasm and smarminess.  
  
"A way to turn back time," he informed her simply. "I know that that's illegal and immoral, and rather difficult besides, but you always were the most brilliant professor in the finest school in the world.”  
  
She shook her head slightly, some of the hesitance gone from her manner as she sat on the bed beside him. "Didn't the Headmaster tell you to go to sleep?”  
  
"And here I thought you remembered me. I almost never do as I'm told."  
  
“You weren't as bad as all that."  
  
"Don't lie to me. I'm confused enough as it is." He was becoming less so, however. Either the fogginess in his head came and went or he had an easier time with certain people.  
  
"I suppose you would be."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Particularly because you're refusing to rest."  
  
"I'm not refusing to rest. I'm refusing to sleep."  
  
"Why is that?"  
  
Sirius sighed. He might as well try the truth. She would understand better than most of the wizarding population, anyway. "I'm not used to sleeping as a human and Dumbledore bound my power to change.”  
  
"He mentioned the Animagus abilities to me." Her beady eyes were now bright more with curiosity than with tears, and they swept speculatively over Sirius. "May I ask when?"  
  
"Midway through fifth year. We started working on it midway through second, James and Peter and me. That was when Remus admitted to being a werewolf, and werewolves aren't a danger to animals.”  
  
"How?"  
  
"We had a brilliant Professor of Transfiguration." Sirius half-batted his eyes.  
  
"Obviously. I should have known," she said dryly.  
  
Sirius shrugged. "I can't help it if I attended a glorious educational institution and on a couple of occasions I went to class.”  
  
She did not seem to deem that worthy of response, or else she was unable to respond, so Sirius continued. "We stole the books from the restricted section of the library. We bought the things we needed in Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. We taught ourselves. Anything to make Remus feel better. But in the end I was the one it saved." He sighed heavily. "Not that I deserved it. But more so than," he jerked his head at Peter's suspended figure, which he could just see through the open door, “him."  
  
Her hand moved to his shoulder, slowly, so he could see it and would not be startled. "I'm so sorry, Sirius.”  
  
The confusion was back. "What do you have to be sorry for?”  
  
"We all . . . anyone who knew you knew what you were, and what James meant to you. We knew how the Ministry was going about things, and we still allowed this to happen. I realize what I've done, and if there's ever any way I can help you, I will do it.”  
  
"Harry's safe now.”  
  
"This isn't about Harry.”  
  
He shook his head. "It's all about Harry, all of it. Harry's past and Harry's future. Nothing else matters. Does he know about the prophecy?"  
  
"Dumbledore has forbidden anyone to tell him."  
  
"Is he happy? Even a little bit?"  
  
She smiled, a small smile, but a real one. "He has two best friends he adores. He loves Quidditch."  
  
"I knew that. If anything, he flies better than James did."  
  
"I never would have thought it possible until I saw him. It was his first time on a broom, eleven years old, and he swerved and dove like he owned the whole sky. He wasn't a show-off. He didn't say two words if you didn't push him. Flying was just inside of him. I was getting special permission for him to play as a first year and buying him a broom before the day was over."  
  
"He played as a first year?"  
  
"First in a century."  
  
"And you bought him that broom he lost in the Whomping Willow."  
  
"I couldn't resist." She turned sharply. "Could you?"  
  
"The Firebolt?"  
  
“Yes."  
  
"Guilty as charged. I should have been spoiling him for the twelve years I was gone. It was the least I could do."  
  
"It was exorbitant."  
  
"I like exorbitant things."  
  
He was just starting to relax, slightly, when there was a rustling noise from the next room. Sirius jumped to his feet— he had not come this far to see Pettigrew escape now. As he had feared, Pettigrew was moving, wriggling against the invisible bonds Dumbledore had used to restrain him.  
  
“I will handle it,” said McGonagall firmly. “He’s still restrained.”  
  
“The rat has nine lives,” said Sirius darkly. He strode into the next room.  
  
It wasn’t McGonagall’s protestations that made him retreat to his makeshift bed like a good little boy.  
  
It was the brush of an invisible hand against his arm and a whispered “Sirius?”  
  
“Are you supposed to be out of the hospital wing?” Sirius whispered back.  
  
He could hear the invisible eyeroll. “Madam Pomfrey thinks we should all live in the hospital wing. It doesn’t mean anything.”  
  
“So you snuck out, snuck back into the Headmaster’s office, and sent some kind of hex at Wormtail over there to distract McGonagall?” asked Sirius.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry with a nonchalant shamelessness that made Sirius proud.  
  
“That’s my godson.” He froze for a moment. “I don’t know if anyone ever told you. I’m your godfather.”  
  
“Yeah, I knew that,” said Harry. Suddenly, Sirius deeply wished that Harry wasn’t invisible. A facial expression or two might be helpful for this conversation.  
  
“Your parents also appointed me your guardian. If anything happened to them… I’ll understand, of course, if you want to stay with your aunt and uncle. But… well… think about it. Once my name's cleared, if you wanted a… a different home….”  
  
"What—live with you?” Harry asked. “Leave the Dursleys?”  
  
"Of course, I thought you wouldn't want to," Sirius rushed on. "I understand, I just thought I'd—"  
  
"Are you insane?" said Harry, his whisper suddenly rough enough that Sirius didn’t need to see his face after all. "Of course I want to leave the Dursleys! Have you got a house? When can I move in?"  
  
"You want to?” asked Sirius a little too loudly considering that McGonagall was still fussing with Pettigrew, who was squeaking protestations, not twenty feet away. "You mean it?"  
  
"Yeah, I mean it!" said Harry.  
  
Sirius couldn’t wipe the smile off of his face. “As soon as we can, Harry, I promise. But Dumbledore is on his way back— he went to fetch Remus. We don’t want him to catch you here.”  
  
“Will the Ministry hold that against you? That you became an Animagus to help a werewolf?”  
  
The innocent question struck Sirius hard. He thought of the lines on Remus' face, and the gray streaks in his hair. He thought of his own reflection. He and Remus had both aged more than they should have.   
  
The Defense Against the Dark Arts job was jinxed— everyone knew that. But he, Sirius, was not going to be the one to lose the job for Remus by publicly naming him as a werewolf at his trial, should he get one.  
  
“I’m going to try to avoid telling the Ministry that bit,” Sirius decided. “And I’m going to find a way to make sure that coward in the next room doesn’t say it, either. It’s been so many years… how many people are really going to remember who else ran around with your father and me if we don’t remind them?”  
  
Harry was quiet, unable to answer that question.  
  
“Go wait in Remus’ office, Harry. The minute he comes in and you’re alone, tell him not to come see me. Don’t come see me here, don’t come to my trial if I get one. Do whatever you have to do to convince him. Cry, fake a seizure, tell him it’s what your parents would have wanted— which isn’t a lie, by the way.”  
  
“I don’t know how to get into Professor Lupin’s office.”  
  
“You’ve never been in there with him?” asked Sirius with surprise.  
  
“I have, but I don’t know his password.”  
  
“You didn’t seem to have trouble with Dumbledore’s password.”  
  
“I think Dumbledore wants people to be able to guess.”  
  
Now there was a thought. Remus might not have wanted Harry to be able to guess his password, but if he had harbored thoughts that Sirius might be innocent, he would have wanted Sirius to be able to guess.  
  
“Six-nine-seven-seven,” he told Harry breathlessly. “Now go.”  
  
“Maybe I can talk to Pettigrew before—”  
  
“I do not want you around that piece of filth. Go!”  
  
Harry went.  
  
Sirius watched the sun rise and wished he could sleep.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: A few repurposed Prisoner of Azkaban quotes in this chapter, mainly Sirius asking Harry to live with him.


	6. Harry and the Hippogriff

Harry cast a longing glance at Peter Pettigrew before quietly exiting the office while Professor McGonagall’s back was turned. The anger he’d felt the night before hadn’t gone away. It would never go away. Peter Pettigrew had as good as murdered his parents and sent his godfather to prison in the bargain. Peter Pettigrew was the reason that in a week’s time Harry would be going to stay with people who hated him instead of remaining in the magical world where he belonged.   
  
He knew that they had been right to let Pettigrew live. It wasn’t just that if Pettigrew lived, Sirius might go free, and Harry would finally have a real home. It was that he didn’t think his parents would have wanted their son, or their friends, to become killers over the likes of Pettigrew.  
  
But he was still angry.  
  
And he still wasn’t sure that Sirius, in the position that he was in, was going to be able to make sure Professor Lupin’s name stayed out of Pettigrew’s mouth.   
  
He had a job to do, though, and he moved invisibly through the corridors with practiced ease until he reached the Defense Against the Dark Arts office. It was, of course, locked; it didn’t seem that Lupin and Dumbledore had returned yet.  
  
“Six-nine-seven-seven,” he muttered, wondering what he was going to do if Sirius had guessed wrong.  
  
The door clicked open.   
  
Harry closed it quickly behind himself and glanced around the office. It looked much as it had during his previous visits. A grindylow, who had been part of the third years’ obstacle course final examination, sat glumly inside his tank.  
  
There was nowhere to hide if Dumbledore came in and was able to see Harry through his invisibility cloak. (Harry wasn’t entirely sure that Dumbledore could see through invisibility cloaks, but Dumbledore always seemed to be able to look directly at Harry when Harry ought to have been invisible.) The door that led to Lupin’s private chambers was locked. “Six-nine-seven-seven,” he tried again, and again the door swung open.  
  
He was going to have to ask Lupin what those numbers meant when he’d finished convincing him to stay away from Sirius until after Sirius’ trial.  
  
He looked around the room with interest and a little bit of guilt. He was, after all, invading Lupin’s privacy, at least according to a scolding voice inside his head that sounded suspiciously like Hermione. But, he reasoned, if he had grown up with his parents— or even with Sirius— he would have been to visit Lupin many times in his life. It probably would have been normal for him to be here.  
  
He scowled again as he thought of Pettigrew.  
  
Then the sound of approaching voices snapped him out of his thoughts. He knelt in the furthest, darkest corner of the room and tried to breathe quietly.   
  
“That’s not necessary. I can manage,” said Lupin, and Dumbledore told Lupin that they would be contacting the Ministry within the hour. Lupin closed his door, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. Dumbledore hadn’t caught him, and that was good. It would have been nice to have overheard something interesting, though.  
  
Harry slid the cloak from his shoulders as Lupin entered the room. “Professor?”  
  
For someone who looked like he might collapse at any moment from sheer exhaustion, Lupin drew his wand remarkably quickly. He recognized Harry just as quickly, and Harry didn’t even have time to feel afraid before Lupin lowered the wand. “How did you get in here?” Lupin asked.  
  
“Sirius told me what the password would be.” He was about to ask what the numbers meant when Lupin eased himself into a chair, his face so gray with tiredness that Harry felt guilty asking anything. “Are you sure you don’t need Madam Pomfrey?” he asked.  
  
“She will come by later this morning whether you ask her to or not,” replied Lupin, and for a second Harry identified so strongly with Lupin that he snorted with laughter. “Not that I don’t appreciate her efforts. She’s a wonderful healer. I might not have survived my childhood without her.”  
  
“Can I at least make tea?” asked Harry. He’d never made tea the magical way, but he’d seen it done more than once and he doubted that it was particularly hard.  
  
Lupin looked amused. “Go ahead. And while you do that, you can tell me why Sirius told you how to break into my office. Or am I too hasty in assuming that Sirius needed a reason to encourage lawbreaking?”  
  
“He wanted me to tell you to stay away from him,” said Harry, before instantly regretting his bluntness. There had definitely been a better way to explain that. Probably he should have given Lupin the tea and talked quietly about something boring so that Lupin would fall asleep until after Sirius had gone.  
  
“Did he say why?” The openness had gone from Lupin’s expression as he twisted in his chair to watch Harry— and to shoot a spell in the direction of the teakettle, which Harry hadn’t been able to figure out after all. Harry busied himself shuffling the tea things around while he tried desperately to think of something to say. Sirius’ advice had been terrible, Harry decided. He didn’t know how to fake a seizure and he didn’t think Lupin would believe him anyway.  
  
“Harry?” Lupin prompted, and there was an edge to his voice that Harry had never heard except when Lupin was speaking to Pettigrew.  
  
“He said my Mum and Dad would have wanted it that way,” Harry said. The immediate guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach suggested that he should have tried faking a seizure after all.  
  
“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,” said Lupin as he carefully accepted the tea Harry offered him. “After all of the lies we tried to untangle last night, we might like to try the truth for a change.”  
  
Harry nodded and tried to remember exactly what had happened. He walked to the window and stared out of it because that was easier than looking at Lupin. “He said he wanted to avoid telling the Ministry why he became an unregistered Animagus if he could. He said that people might not remember that you were friends if he left your name out of it.”  
  
“So he wants to keep himself from being portrayed as a friend of a dark creature while he’s trying to prove his innocence.”  
  
“You’re not a dark creature!” Harry objected vehemently.  
  
Lupin laughed tiredly. “I refer you to page 41 of _F antastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,”_ he said. “It’s wise of Sirius, actually.”  
  
“But you’re a professor!”  
  
“I won’t be if my condition becomes common knowledge at Sirius’ trial,” Lupin returned. “There would be angry owls from parents demanding my resignation before the Wizengamot ever reached a decision.”  
  
“Then Sirius is right. You have to stay away,” Harry decided, but he never heard what Lupin said in return. His attention had shifted to two familiar figures hastening across the grounds beneath the window. It was Ron and Hermione, and they were on their way to Hagrid’s hut.  
  
“Buckbeak,” Harry remembered with a crash of grief. He had been so consumed with Sirius and Pettigrew and Lupin and their stories of his parents and Sirius’ offer to really, truly be his his godfather that he had forgotten about Hagrid and Buckbeak. “They executed him last night. Ron and Hermione are going to see Hagrid, I have to—”  
  
“Go,” agreed Lupin, and Harry thought he looked like he had been struck rather harder than he ought to have been. “Tell Hagrid I’m sorry. I wish… I wish I had done something.”  
  
“So do I,” said Harry. “But I don’t know what anyone could have done that Hermione and Ron didn’t do.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Harry ran hard through the morning sunlight and managed to catch Ron and Hermione just as they reached Hagrid’s door.  
  
“Where have you been?” Hermione and Ron demanded in unison.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” said Harry. “Hagrid’s what’s important.”  
  
“I still can’t believe they did it,” said Hermione, looking faintly sick.  
  
“Nor can I,” said Ron. “I thought— I thought they’d be fair. But hearing everything we heard last night, I guess the Ministry hasn’t ever believed in being fair, has it?”  
  
“Your father works for the Ministry, and he believes in being fair,” Hermione pointed out. “And when I’m done with school, maybe I’ll go to work for the Ministry, and I’ll make some changes—”  
  
“Stop, you sound like Percy,” said Ron as he banged on Hagrid’s door. “Hagrid! It’s us!”   
  
There was no answer. Ron and Hermione glanced at each other. Harry reached around them to throw the door open.  
  
“Harry,” warned Hermione, but Harry shoved past her into the hut. After all, he had already walked uninvited into Dumbledore’s and Lupin’s offices today; what was one more?  
  
Normally, Hagrid’s cozy hut was one of Harry’s favorite places in the world, but today the very air was heavy and dank. It stank of mead and grief. As Harry’s eyes adjusted to the dark, Fang slunk out of the darkness and leaned his head against Harry’s legs with a whimper. Harry scratched Fang’s ears automatically. “We’ll take care of everything,” he told Fang.  
  
“Good thing that dog can’t understand you,” said Ron. “Because I think you just lied to it. There’s no way we can take care of this.” He pointed at the enormous bed in the corner of the room. Hagrid lay there, tears squeezing out from behind his swollen, closed eyelids and splashing on the floor.   
  
When Harry moved closer to Hagrid, he could see that Hagrid’s hands were caked with dirt and blood.  
  
“There’s a shovel leaning against the wall outside,” said Hermione, her quick gaze following Harry’s. “I think Hagrid must have buried Buckbeak as soon as the Ministry left last night.”  
  
“We would have helped,” said Harry. “We could have had a funeral.”  
  
“Maybe we can still have a memorial,” said Hermione. “But I don’t think Hagrid will be up to it. It might be kindest to let him sleep.”  
  
“But we can take Fang out for exercise and check on the flobberworms and clean up a little,” Harry said helplessly.   
  
Ron and Hermione quickly agreed. They started with the horrible work of removing the feathers and blood from Hagrid’s garden and covering over the spot where Macnair’s axe had struck the earth. That done, they began throwing sticks for Fang to fetch so that Fang, at least, wouldn’t be terribly unhappy.   
  
They were perfectly positioned, then, to see the group of officials from the Ministry arrive midway through the morning.  
  
“They’ve come for Sirius and Pettigrew,” said Hermione needlessly, and Harry felt a clench of fear. He knew that Dumbledore and Lupin and Sirius had all planned for this, but he couldn’t help feeling that a ministry that would execute an innocent hippogriff might also give Sirius the dementor’s kiss without ever hearing him out.   
  
“Where are the dementors?” Harry asked. He only now realized that he had not felt their presence even though he had been outside for most of the morning. Just last night, they had attacked him not so very far from this spot.  
  
“Gone,” said Ron. “That’s about the only thing Madam Pomfrey was happy about this morning, after the way you ran off last night. Dumbledore said he wasn't going to let them near the castle to collect Sirius— too much chance of them hurting a student, he said. He told Fudge to bring all of his best Aurors instead, and look, he has. That’s Mad-Eye Moody. He’s the greatest Auror of all time, though he’s mostly retired now. Let’s get a closer look when they come back out, shall we?”  
  
Hermione made a meaningful look in Harry’s direction, and she and Ron had a wordless conversation over Harry’s head. “I can see you, you know,” said Harry irritably. “And I’m not going to do anything stupid if they bring Pettigrew out in front of us.”   
  
“See?” said Ron, as if he’d definitively won a lengthy argument with Hermione. The three of them wandered toward the front door of the castle, trying to look natural. Despite the sunny weather, the grounds were almost deserted; most of the students were taking advantage of the final Hogsmeade day of the year.   
  
“They may not bring them right out the front door,” Hermione speculated. “Couldn’t they, oh, fly them out the window so that none of us get in their way?”  
  
“Sounds like something old Mad-Eye would do,” Ron agreed reluctantly. “They say he’s completely paranoid, never leaves anything to chance.”  
  
“He’d have to be like that, wouldn’t he? If he was the greatest Auror ever?” asked Harry. He was now almost as keen to get a glimpse of Mad-Eye Moody as he was to get another chance to speak to Pettigrew. He didn’t know what he’d say to Pettigrew, anyway. He didn’t even know what he’d say to Sirius, and he’d just agreed to live with Sirius.  
  
“Exactly,” Ron was saying, oblivious to Harry’s ambivalence. “Dad really likes him, though. ’Course, Dad likes all kinds of people who are just a bit—”  
  
Ron broke off as the castle doors opened and Peter Pettigrew, still suspended in his magical cage, was escorted out by half a dozen Aurors. Harry was dazzled by the one called Mad-Eye, who really did have an electric blue mechanical eye where one of his own should have been, but it was a young woman who stepped in front of them, blocking their progress.   
  
“Oi! You lot! No closer!” she ordered. “Why aren’t you in Hogsmeade with everyone else?” Then her eyes did the familiar flick to Harry’s forehead. “Oh. You’re Harry Potter.”  
  
“And I’m not allowed to go to Hogsmeade because everyone thought that the man who sold my parents to Voldemort would find a way to kill me if I did.”  
  
“You said his name,” said the woman, who barely looked old enough to be more than a few years out of Hogwarts herself. She didn’t flinch, and she didn’t look abashed, which made Harry like her.  
  
“Can I talk to Pettigrew?” he asked.  
  
“Can if it’s up to me,” she said cheerily. “But it’s not. I’m not a fully qualified Auror yet, see, and Sirius Black is my cousin so there’s a conflict if I go near him. I’m only allowed to be lookout, and even that’s only because Mad-Eye likes me.”  
  
“Less with each passing moment,” rumbled a low voice from the other side of Pettigrew. “Tonks, less chatting and more watching. Potter, come around to me but stay at least six feet from the cage at all times. Constant vigilance!”   
  
Heart pounding, Harry gave the cage a wide berth and came face-to-face with Mad-Eye Moody. Both Moody’s real eye and his magical one evaluated Harry carefully. “Heard you brought him in yourself,” Moody said.   
  
“I had help,” said Harry. “Loads of it.”   
  
“Modest,” said Moody. “Good. Dangerous to get too full of yourself. Equally dangerous to be too timid, but I don’t think you’ve got that problem. I suppose you have a right to speak to him, but you don’t get any closer than this.”  
  
Harry considered it. All he really wanted to do was tell Pettigrew to be quiet about why he’d become an Animagus in the first place so that Professor Lupin could stay on as his teacher, but he couldn’t very well tell the famous Aurors (or the unqualified Auror lookout) that his professor was a werewolf.   
  
“I’m glad Sirius decided to let you live,” he said at last. “After he spent twelve years planning to kill you. Mercy is better than revenge, right?”  
  
“He can’t answer you,” said Moody. “We’re not removing any of the binding spells until he’s safe in his cell.”  
  
“It won’t be a cell a rat can escape from, will it?” asked Harry anxiously. “Rats can get through the smallest—”  
  
“There’s nothing I hate more than a Death Eater going free,” said Moody. “You can leave it to me to make sure he won’t go anywhere but the Wizengamot.”  
  
Harry nodded. He had no doubt that Moody spoke the truth.   
  
“So Wormtail,” said Harry loudly, “if you have a chance to be merciful and not hurt someone when you don’t have to, I hope you take it. I think things would work out better for you if you did. That’s all.”   
  
He nodded his thanks to Moody and returned to Ron and Hermione.  
  
“That’s all you wanted to say? That mercy is good?” asked the young woman— Tonks, Moody had called her.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, and Moody told Tonks to stop talking and start moving. Slowly, Pettigrew’s cage drifted away with the six wizards and witches.   
  
Harry hastily explained to Ron and Hermione what he’d been trying to communicate to Pettigrew and why.  
  
Ron shook his head glumly. “I don’t think old Scabbers got your meaning,” he said. “And I don’t think he’d care if he did.”  
  
It seemed like they waited a very long time for the rest of the Aurors to emerge. When they finally did, the Auror acting as lookout wouldn’t let them anywhere near Sirius. Sirius hadn’t been put in a cage, but his hands and feet had been fitted with heavy manacles and he looked disoriented.  
  
Harry, Ron, and Hermione stared after the group until they vanished from sight. Then they returned to Hagrid’s hut.  
  


* * *

  
  
It wasn’t until they were ensconced in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express that Hermione answered a question that Harry and Ron had been asking all year: she told them how she had been getting to all of her classes when there didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. She had been given a time-turner, she explained, but she had returned it and decided to have a normal schedule the next year.  
  
Ron and Harry were full of ideas of how the time-turner could have been used for far more interesting purposes than taking extra classes, but Hermione shook her head firmly and insisted that there were all sorts of rules and complications that came with changing time.  
  
Eventually the subject changed to Quidditch. “It’s the World Cup this summer!” exclaimed Ron. “How about it, Harry? Come and stay and we’ll go see it! Dad can usually get tickets from work.”  
  
The proposal cheered Harry up a great deal. He was certain that the Dursleys would jump at the opportunity to get rid of him as soon as possible. He didn’t let himself wonder whether, perhaps, he would need permission from Sirius rather than from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia.  
  
His musings were interrupted by Hermione suddenly peering over his shoulder. “Harry, what’s that thing outside your window?”  
  
Harry turned to look outside and saw one of the school owls valiantly flying alongside the train, struggling not to be buffeted this way and that in the train’s slipstream. Harry quickly pulled down the window and guided the owl inside. As soon as he removed the letter the owl carried, the owl flew back out the window and vanished without a trace.  
  
“The letter’s addressed to you, Harry,” said Hermione.  
  
He tore it open. “It’s from Lupin,” he said.  
  
“Read it aloud!” Ron and Hermione demanded.  
  
 _Dear Harry,_  
  
 _I hope this finds you before you reach your aunt and uncle. I know they don’t much care for owl post._  
  
 _Soon after the students left for Hogsmeade Station, we had word from the Ministry that Sirius and Peter will be tried before the Wizengamot the day after tomorrow. I wanted you to know as soon as possible. As far as I can tell, this is excellent news._  
  
 _As I promised, I will not make any attempt to attend in person, but I will follow the proceedings as closely as possible from a distance and update you by letter— or in person, if you prefer and you think that it is worth irritating your aunt and uncle. (My mother was a Muggle but it has been some years since I tried to pass myself off as one.)_  
  
 _Send word if you need anything._  
  
 _—RJL_  
  
They debated whether Ron might be able to persuade his father to let him see the trial in person for the rest of the trip.   
  
At King’s Cross station, Harry reluctantly bid Ron and Hermione goodbye, then wheeled the trolley bearing his trunk and Hedwig’s cage toward Uncle Vernon, who greeted him in his usual fashion.   
  
“What’s that?” he snarled, staring at the envelope Harry was still clutching in his hand, “If it’s another form for me to sign, you’ve got another—”  
  
“It’s not,” said Harry cheerfully. “It’s a letter about my godfather.”  
  
“Godfather?” sputtered Uncle Vernon. “You haven't got a godfather!”  
  
“Yes, I have,” said Harry brightly. “He was my mum and dad’s best friend. He’s a convicted murderer, but he broke out of prison… it’s really important to him to keep up with my news… check if I’m happy…”  
  
And, grinning broadly at the look of horror on Uncle Vernon’s face, Harry set off toward the station exit, Hedwig rattling along in front of him, for what looked like a much better summer than the last.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Heavy quoting from Prisoner of Azkaban in the last few paragraphs.


	7. Sirius, Tried

They took Sirius back to Azkaban, and somehow it was worse than he remembered it.  
  
His only real defense against the dementors was gone; Dumbledore’s spell held, and he was unable to transform into a dog.  
  
His hair grew filthy again. His beard itched as it grew in.  
  
The small comfort of the two warm meals he’d eaten at Hogwarts faded away. Sometimes he could force himself to eat the cold, gray, tasteless slop that appeared in his cell in a bowl. Sometimes he could not.  
  
He lost track of time almost immediately.  
  
The dementors were angry.  
  
Sirius was angry, too.   
  
He cursed Dumbledore for binding him.  
  
He cursed Remus for convincing him to turn himself in.  
  
He cursed Pettigrew for whining from his own cell halfway down the hall.  
  
Pettigrew kept calling for James, begging for James’ mercy, and Pettigrew had no business saying James’ name, let alone asking for mercy.  
  
If for an instant Sirius reflected that Pettigrew’s whining meant that Pettigrew hadn’t escaped, and that Harry was safe, and that Remus knew the truth and could protect Harry if need be, the dementors rushed his cell and he collapsed to the ground, ears full of his own whimpered whispers.  
  
Again and again, he dragged himself back.  
  
 _I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent._  
  
When the Aurors returned and pushed back the dementors, Sirius was able to stand of his own volition and hold out his hands to be shackled.  
  
“Thank you, Sirius,” said the lead Auror in a low, soothing voice. “The others will keep their wands on you, but I won’t chain your legs this time.”  
  
Sirius nodded. He couldn't bring himself to thank the man for only partially chaining him. He couldn’t bring himself to form words at all. For now, he had three words that he had to keep close to his mind. He knew that, above all other things.  
  
 _I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent._  
  
“Can you walk down the staircase by yourself, do you think?”  
  
Sirius nodded again.  
  
“It’s very narrow and uneven, Kingsley,” said one of the other Aurors. “Maybe we’d better levitate him.”  
  
“It’s his choice,” Kingsley proclaimed. “Do you want us to levitate you?” he asked Sirius again.  
  
Sirius shook his head. No. He was leaving Azkaban and he would walk out under his own power.  
  
“I’ll keep my hand on you, just in case,” Kingsley decided. “The stairs are uneven. Worse than the ones at Hogwarts that move when you’re halfway between floors.”  
  
Kingsley would get no argument from Sirius. Everything about Azkaban was worse than everything everywhere else.  
  
Descending the winding, damp, stone staircase took all of Sirius’ concentration. With each step, he felt more dizzy and off-balance. More than once he was grateful for the support of Kingsley’s hand, and more than once he tried frantically to shut off the feeling of gratitude before it summoned a dementor.   
  
He didn’t stumble until they reached the bottom and the fresh, frigid sea air slapped him across his face.   
  
Had it felt this way when he had slipped away from the prison in his dog form? He didn’t think so.   
  
The gray, stormy sea hadn’t looked so frigid to his dog-self, either. But this time there was a boat moored to the small dock tucked in amidst the rocks. It would be nice not to have to swim away from the island this time.  
  
Time.  
  
How much time?  
  
“How long?” he asked Kingsley hoarsely.   
  
“Five and a half days.”  
  
It felt so very much longer. He wobbled on his feet again. Kingsley gestured to one of the others to step into the boat, wand trained on Sirius’ heart. Kingsley helped Sirius sit down in the boat. The third wizard climbed in behind them, his wand also steady on Sirius.  
  
Six to bring him here. Three to take him away. He wondered why.  
  
Six. Three. Six-nine-seven-seven. Twelve. Thirteen. Five and a half.  
  
Less than a week.   
  
It felt so much longer.  
  


* * *

  
  
After they crossed the water, Kingsley turned the boat over to Mad-Eye Moody. Sirius wanted to say hello to Mad-Eye—wanted to speak to someone he remembered from before his life had shattered— but it seemed like too much effort to turn his head, let alone speak. Besides, Mad-Eye was focused on getting the boat back to Azkaban with his own team of Aurors and handing Kingsley an empty flower pot.  
  
No flowers were going to grow here where it was always cold.  
  
Then Sirius slammed face down onto a hard floor and realized that the flower pot had been a portkey.  
  
“Sorry,” said Kingsley, and he did sound sorry. “I couldn’t keep you on your feet. Sit on the bed a minute.”  
  
This last was more command than suggestion. As a wand was pointed at his chest, Sirius felt it prudent to obey. Around him, the Aurors cast spell after spell to keep him in his new cell. He didn't ask where he was.   
  
He didn’t care.  
  


* * *

  
  
He lost track of time again. It might have been an hour. It might have been a day.   
  
Then time shifted, because his cousin Andromeda was standing on the other side of his cell, and she looked exactly as she had looked the last time he’d seen her. He had gone from a child to an old man. Remus had gone from a child to an old man. Harry had gone from a baby to a young man.   
  
Andromeda was young and vibrant and beautiful.  
  
“Anna?” he asked hesitantly, lest she be a ghost or a trick or a hallucination.  
  
“Hello, Sirius,” she said. Her voice wasn't raspy and unused like his.  
  
“What are you doing here?”  
  
“I wanted to see you. I asked Nymphadora if she thought that she could get permission to escort me here, and she could.” Andromeda nodded at the young witch who stood half a step behind her.  
  
 _Nymphadora_. His delightful mini-cousin was no longer the small girl he had last seen fifteen years before. “You’ve forgiven your mother for saddling you with a ridiculous name like Nymphadora?” he asked her by way of greeting.  
  
The cheerful face darkened. “Not hardly. Everyone calls me Tonks.”  
  
“Wise decision,” Sirius told her. “How did you get your mother down here? Or up here? Or wherever we are?”  
  
“Basement of the Ministry,” Tonks told him, her good cheer returning. “I haven’t qualified as an Auror yet, but I will later this summer.”  
  
“She’s the only candidate they’ve taken into the Auror program in years,” Andromeda interrupted proudly, leaving Tonks looking faintly embarrassed.  
  
“I’m glad all the relatives in Azkaban didn’t hurt your chances,” he told Tonks.  
  
“They won’t let me guard you officially, though,” Tonks explained. “Relationship’s too close. They keep me on Pettigrew.”  
  
Sirius’ insides seized at the name. “Is he here too?”  
  
“Yes. We brought him over after Kingsley and the others brought you over. I promised Mum that Kingsley was a good sort. One of the best.”  
  
Sirius nodded vaguely. The people he knew knew the people he didn’t know and it was hard to make all of those connections at once when he was so tired of being caged and so giddy at being away from the dementors and so ready to be allowed to sleep, even on a rickety camp bed in the basement of the Ministry.  
  
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there silently, but the next time he summoned the energy to focus on Andromeda she looked concerned. “Sirius?” she asked, and from her tone it seemed like she had probably said his name more than once.   
  
“Yes, Anna?” he asked, trying to sound as if he’d been ignoring her on purpose because he had so many things to do that were more interesting than talking to his cousin.  
  
“Is what they’re saying true?”  
  
“No one’s brought me a newspaper lately. I don’t know what they’re saying.”  
  
“Is it true that you’re innocent of murdering those Muggles?”  
  
Oh. His voice deserted him and he nodded. Yes, he was innocent.  
  
 _I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent._  
  
The fog in his brain cleared and he was able to focus better when Andromeda asked her next question.   
  
“Do you want me to get someone to represent you?”   
  
“Mum, the Ministry’s not going to allow that,” murmured Tonks quietly. “They want to hear him speak for himself. See how he presents himself.”  
  
Andromeda flicked a look of annoyance at her daughter. “Am I allowed to buy him better-fitting robes?”  
  
Tonks traipsed across the hallway to discuss the matter a pair of guards, then skipped back toward them, tripping over her feet as she came. “Yes,” she told her mother. “You can buy robes.”  
  
“Save your money, Anna,” said Sirius with a roll of his eyes. “They’ve already decided what they’re going to do. It has nothing to do with what I say or how I act or what I’m wearing. At least they’re pretending to give me a trial this time.”  
  
“That’s a dark way of looking at it,” said Tonks. Sirius refrained from telling her that his was the voice of experience and she would learn that he was right. “Though I suppose you aren’t recovered from the dementors yet.”  
  
Beside her daughter, Andromeda’s face grew hard. Sirius felt a rush of anger in his blood. At moments like this, Andromeda looked remarkably like Bellatrix.  
  
He was glad that Andromeda hadn’t asked about Bellatrix. He wasn’t up to having that discussion just now.  
  
He waited as Andromeda chose her words carefully. Growing up, all of the Black children had been told to choose their words carefully. It was one of many lessons Sirius had ignored. (So had Bellatrix, but no one minded so much with her.)  
  
When she spoke, Andromeda’s voice was low, frantic, and clipped. “I never thought I would say this— least of all to you— but Sirius, you need to act like a Black!”  
  
“I don’t think casting the Cruciatus on the Winzengamot is going to be helpful,” said Sirius. “And I couldn’t give a lecture on blood supremacy with a straight face.”  
  
Andromeda glared at him. It took a lot to make Andromeda glare. “Find an angle and use it.”  
  
“It’s been a long day. Since you’ve obviously already decided what angle I should be using, why don’t you just tell me?”  
  
“Get Harry Potter on your side. Publicly.”  
  
“That’s good, Mum,” said Tonks admiringly. “I saw him last week. He really likes Sirius, and he hates Pettigrew.”  
  
“I am not bringing Harry into this.”  
  
“Why not? He stands to benefit if you’re released, correct? Aren’t you his godfather?”  
  
“That part hasn’t been in the _Daily Prophet?_”  
  
“No,” confirmed Andromeda. “It’s not exactly common knowledge.”  
  
“Then they have decided to put me back in Azkaban,” Sirius decided with more clarity. “If they were going to let me out, they’d start laying the groundwork for the Ministry’s heroic role in reuniting Harry with his father’s old friend.”  
  
“Exactly. That’s why you need to lay the groundwork if they won’t. The Boy Who Lived makes a public statement that he is deeply appreciative of the Ministry’s willingness to admit that it was wrong. Cornelius Fudge would be a personal hero of his if he put integrity before politics. All of a sudden, the truth benefits the Minister politically. The Minister distances himself from previous regimes, never mind that he was a part of the previous regime.”   
  
“I don’t think Harry will like doing that,” said Sirius slowly. He didn’t know how he knew. He just did.  
  
“It doesn’t matter if he likes it,” said Andromeda briskly. “It matters if he does it. You have a very powerful person on your side. Do I have your blessing to ask him?”  
  
After a long moment, Sirius nodded.  
  
Then he was alone.  
  
He didn’t know how Andromeda was going to go about asking Harry anything.  
  
Even without dementors, the food that appeared in his cell had no taste.  
  
Even without dementors, he didn’t sleep that night.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next morning, no one said anything to Sirius at all.  
  
Breakfast appeared in his cell; he ate it and tasted nothing.  
  
A new set of robes appeared in his cell. He put them on. They fit him perfectly and almost made him look merely thin rather than emaciated. He wasn’t sure how Andromeda had managed it, but she’d always been very clever with domestic spells and perhaps that extended to measuring clothing with just her eyes.  
  
He cleaned himself up as much as he could.  
  
He waited.  
  
He tried to transform. He couldn’t. Did Dumbledore have to be so good at everything he did?  
  
He waited.  
  
Around the middle of the day, more food appeared in his cell. He ate some of it, then pushed it away. He wondered whether the food had been magically altered to be tasteless or whether something inside of him had broken.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sometime that afternoon, the Auror, Kingsley, appeared and opened Sirius’ cell. “You’re taking me out alone?” Sirius asked.  
  
“Do I need backup?” asked Kingsley pleasantly.  
  
“No,” said Sirius.  
  
“I didn’t think so.”   
  
“Where are we going?”  
  
“To your trial.”  
  
Sirius nodded.  
  
 _Act like a Black ,_ Andromeda had said.  
  
Back straight, head up, voice measured as they crossed the short hallway to the large dungeon.  
  
Then across the dungeon to the chair in the center of the room. Chains sprang from the arms and legs of the chair to bind him as he looked up at the sea of plum-colored robes on the high bench.  
  
He knew almost every one of the fifty faces, but many of them were hard to place, emanating as they did from another time. A few scowled. A few looked sympathetic. Most stared impassively from the shadows. Dumbledore, of course, stood out.  
  
“The accused being present,” called out Cornelius Fudge, “let us begin.”  
  
The list of interrogators and charges was interminable, and Sirius let his eyes flicker to the other side of the courtroom. He could tell that the Daily Prophet and Wizarding Radio were present. Andromeda was there, too, and beside her was Ted Tonks— a little fatter than Sirius remembered him, but with the same warmly open face. Ted caught his eye and nodded, and Sirius quickly looked in the other direction.   
  
To his surprise, he saw Harry’s friend Ron sitting in the front row, flanked by two tall young men who must have been his older brothers. Ron, too, caught Sirius’ eye and mouthed his support in words so profane that one of his brothers shoved him against the bench and exhorted him to behave.  
  
After that, Sirius didn’t look at the audience. The glares he could handle. The expressions of support were overwhelming, and he did not like to be overwhelmed.  
  
There was no time to look at the anyone but the interrogators, anyway, as the questions flew fast and thick.  
  
They started with so many questions about his family that for a moment he wondered if he was going to be expected to trace his lineage all the way back to Phineas Nigellus Black, the least popular headmaster in Hogwarts history.   
  
They continued with a litany of questions about whether he understood that it was illegal to become an unregistered Animagus. Peter’s name and James’ name came up over and over. Remus’ name never arose; somehow everyone seemed willing to assume that Sirius had kept a mandrake leaf in his mouth for a month for no reason other than arrogance.  
  
He was already exhausted when the questions about Halloween, 1981, began to rain down on his head. His voice cracked. His vision blurred with tears. He couldn’t wipe his eyes; the shackles held his hands firmly in place.  
  
He was glad when the subject shifted back to how he had escaped from Azkaban. This part of the story he could tell around the buzzing in his head.  
  
Then everything was silent but for the whispering of the Wizengamot.   
  
_“Those in favor of clearing the accused of all charges?” _a voice boomed out from somewhere Sirius couldn’t see. Hands raised. Sirius didn’t have time to count them, but he noticed that Cornelius Fudge had taken his side. _“Those in favor of conviction?”_ Hands raised, and Sirius didn’t have time to count them, either, but the audience had calculated everything and begun to chatter excitedly.   
  
_“Cleared of all charges.”_  
  
The shackles receded.   
  
It was rather anticlimactic.  
  


* * *

  
  
He almost fell when he stood. He had lost feeling in his legs while sitting motionless in the interrogation chair.   
  
Hundreds of grasping hands seemed to reach for him, and even though he wanted to talk to Andromeda, and to Ron, he wanted more than anything to escape.  
  
He was good at escaping, though; he hadn’t spent a year on the run without learning to evade grasping hands. Come to that, he hadn’t spent seven years pranking his way through Hogwarts without learning when and how to run.  
  
He broke free of the throng before the members of the Wizengamot had even left the high bench and, after a terrifying few moments in a lift, emerged into the long, splendid front hall.  
  
He had always hated the Ministry building. It looked too much like Grimmauld Place. The colors were brighter, to be sure, but the Fountain of Magical Brethren would not have been out of place in his parents’ ballroom.   
  
The hall was teeming with people, as it always was, but none of them seemed to recognize him. He had only seconds to disappear into this crowd before the crowd from the trial caught up to him, and his legs were not working correctly, and he didn't have a wand—  
  
“Padfoot.”  
  
He turned on his heel so hard that he almost fell. “Moony.”  
  
“Do you want to come home with me? It won’t be much, I can offer you a roof over your head and food—”  
  
“Sounds perfect,” said Sirius. “Can we go now?”   
  
Remus pulled him toward the area designated for Disapparators. “Ready?” he asked, his grip tight on Sirius’ arm.  
  
“Ready.”  
  
The Ministry vanished.  
  
 ** _To be continued._**


	8. The Reunion

Remus’ first instinct was to worry that the side-along Apparition hadn’t gone perfectly. It had been rather a long jump, and Apparition could feel uncomfortable to someone who wasn’t used to it.   
  
Before Remus was able to let go of Sirius’ arm and inspect him for damage, though, Sirius pulled him into a hard, tight hug.  
  
 _This didn’t happen the first time,_ Remus thought stupidly.  
  
Of course it hadn’t happened the first time. Sirius hadn’t been publicly cleared at all the first time.   
  
Remus felt an unexpected rush of terror. The fierceness of Sirius’ grip made his decision to change history palpably real and deeply personal.  
  
He’d known Sirius, the brilliant teenager.  
  
He’d known Sirius, the brooding fugitive.  
  
He had never known Sirius, the free man.  
  
 _But I’ll learn,_ he reminded himself. _I’ll learn who you were meant to be and I’ll fix you._  
  
Sirius was leaning on him heavily and making no move to break away from the hug. “Are you all right?” Remus asked.  
  
Sirius lifted his head and Remus could see that he had been crying. “The way your heart’s pounding, I should be asking you that.”  
  
“I was afraid I hurt you when we Apparated.”  
  
“Nah, you were perfect.” Sirius unwrapped himself from Remus but kept one arm draped over Remus’ shoulders. _He’s definitely having trouble standing_ , Remus decided. “Where are we?” Sirius looked around with a sudden energy and interest. “Wales?” he guessed.  
  
“Yorkshire.”  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here.”  
  
“You’ve seen it out the window of the Hogwarts Express.”  
  
“When was I ever looking out the window?” Sirius grinned more broadly. “I should have. It’s beautiful.”   
  
“It’s isolated and it’s cheap,” said Remus bluntly. For an instant, he saw how brilliantly green their surroundings must be to Sirius’ eyes after twelve years of the monotonous darkness of Azkaban followed by a year of canine gray-yellow-blue vision. “And it is beautiful,” he agreed. It was.  
  
“I can’t wait for the full moon. We’ll have fun around here.”  
  
“Perhaps we should make sure you’re able to walk before we start making those plans.”  
  
Sirius shrugged against him. “Nothing really wrong. You ever been chained to an interrogation chair for hours?”  
  
Remus felt the blood drain from his face at the unpleasant memory. As it happened, he _had_ been chained to an interrogation chair for hours— two days after James’ death, one day after Sirius’ arrest. He hadn’t thought about it in years.  
  
He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought about it in years. It had seemed like the kind of memory that would always be at the forefront of his mind.  
  
“Let’s go inside,” Remus said, turning Sirius toward the cottage. “Before you collapse out here.”  
  
“You wouldn’t let me collapse.”  
  
“I have presents for you.”  
  
Whatever retort had been on the tip of Sirius’ tongue— and Remus could tell it had been _something_ — it died as he took his first real look at the cottage. Remus had spent the past days of Peter’s and Sirius’ trials working out his nervous energy by shoring up the cottage in a way he’d never bothered to do before. Still, it had a neglected look about it.   
  
“How bad has it been for you?” asked Sirius quietly. “The last thirteen years.”  
  
“Some of it was bad,” said Remus. “Not all of it.” He changed the subject quickly as he opened the door and pushed Sirius onto the sofa. Then he grabbed a wand from the bookcase and flipped it in Sirius’ direction. Sirius caught it easily.  
  
“This is the same one you gave me in the Shrieking Shack.”  
  
“It seemed to work well enough for you. It’s certainly better than nothing until you can get to Ollivander’s and get a perfect match.”  
  
Sirius turned the wand over in his hand before experimentally casting a few simple spells. “Where did it come from, Moony?”  
  
Remus explained about the Room of Requirement and its special incarnation for hidden things, quite enjoying Sirius’ outrage that Hogwarts held secrets they hadn’t discovered.   
  
Then came Sirius’ next question. “How did you find out about it?”  
  
Remus couldn’t very well admit that in a future that hadn’t happened yet and might never happen, he’d learned about the room from Harry, who had learned about it from a house-elf. “I heard a student discussing it and I went exploring,” he said. It wasn’t technically a lie. Sirius deserved to enjoy at least one full day of freedom before Remus started burdening him with thoughts of Horcruxes and murderous potions masters.  
  
A change of subject seemed in order, so Remus informed Sirius that the fireplace was on the Floo Network and he was free to go anywhere he liked, any time he liked if he didn’t want to Apparate with an imperfect wand.  
  
“It’s strange,” said Sirius. “For a year, I had to stay hidden when I didn’t want to. Now I can go wherever I want, and all I want to do is hide.”  
  
“Then hiding it is,” said Remus.  
  


* * *

  
  
Remus had expected Sirius to jump right into experiencing everything he’d been denied for over a decade.   
  
Sirius had never been one for doing what he was expected to do.  
  
Instead of seeking out old acquaintances or an audience, he was content to be alone with Remus.  
  
Instead of demanding that they bring Harry home the moment Sirius’ name was clear, he accepted Remus’ suggestion that Harry stay with his Muggle relatives for another week. Even stranger, he accepted the suggestion without asking why. They did, of course, send Harry a letter telling him that all had gone well and when he should expect them.   
  
Instead of Flooing to restaurants and pubs, he preferred to stay at the cottage for meals. When he ate, it was in a perfunctory sort of way, as if he took no pleasure in finally being able to nourish his long-starved body. When Remus asked whether there was something in particular he wanted to eat— money be damned, Remus would bet the goblins on the outcome of the Quidditch World Cup if funds became an issue— Sirius looked almost frightened. “No one’s asked me that in thirteen years,” he said quietly. “And I can’t taste anything, anyway.” Remus assured him that the after-effects of the dementors would fade (they had the first time… hadn’t they?) and began serving Sirius hot chocolate with every meal.  
  
Instead of rushing straight to Ollivander’s for a new wand, or enjoying the one Remus had given him, he did most things in the non-magical way as if he had forgotten that there was a magical solution.  
  
But Sirius never forgot to use magic at night when he cast a powerful silencing charm around his bedroom. Remus wished that he could have promised Sirius that the nightmares would fade, but he was not at all sure that they would. He could only hope that when Sirius woke in the middle of the night, he would choose to do something other than drink and brood. To that end, Remus left half a dozen books he thought Sirius might enjoy on the dresser, and he was pleased to notice that Sirius did work his way through the volume of the _Daily Prophet’s_ best crosswords. (He did it quickly and brilliantly, too. There was nothing wrong with Sirius’ intellect.)   
  


* * *

  
  
After several days of this, the fireplace flared to life unexpectedly. Sirius and Remus both jumped when the head of Albus Dumbledore appeared.   
  
“Professor Lupin,” he called, and something in Remus twitched at the form of address Dumbledore had chosen quite deliberately. Dumbledore must be wondering how Remus had evaded the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. “Does Sirius Black happen to be with you?”  
  
“Yes, Headmaster,” Remus replied. He fell to his knees by the fire; Sirius knelt down, too.  
  
Dumbledore smiled at Sirius. Remus wondered if the smile was genuine, then wondered if he would survive the summer before being completely crippled by paranoia. “Sirius, you left your trial rather abruptly.”  
  
“I thought the removal of the manacles was a sign that you were ready for me to go,” said Sirius. Remus welcomed the harsh edge in his friend’s voice. It was better by far than the numb uncertainty that had threatened to become the norm.  
  
“I’d like to lift the spell I put on you that prevents you from transforming,” Dumbledore told Sirius, and Remus mentally kicked himself for not contacting Dumbledore earlier.   
  
“I’d like that, too,” said Sirius needlessly.  
  
“And Remus, there are some things I need to discuss with you about the upcoming school year. Can you both join me at Hogwarts this afternoon?”  
  
They chorused their agreement and Dumbledore vanished without lingering.  
  
They arrived in Hogsmeade hours earlier than necessary and ducked into the Three Broomsticks. “It doesn’t feel quite right to come in here when it isn’t freezing outside,” Remus observed, and Sirius nodded in agreement.  
  
Madam Rosmerta turned at the sound of their voices, but her usual cheery greeting died on her lips at the sight of Sirius. To Remus’ horror, she burst into tears.  
  
She recovered herself swiftly, although not without telling Sirius how very sorry she was for his troubles, and how guilty she felt for ever believing the stories about him, and how no one had ever made her laugh the way he and James had, and how of course it would be her pleasure to bring him anything he liked and she wouldn’t hear of him paying for it.  
  
Sirius soothed her and thanked her and said appropriately stoic things.  
  
“You handled that well,” Remus whispered when Madam Rosmerta vanished into the kitchen to personally oversee the preparation of everything she wanted to serve Sirius— which sounded like the entirety of the menu.  
  
Sirius shrugged his acknowledgement. “Let’s get out of here as fast as we can. We’ll go to the school and wait in the Room of Requirement until Dumbledore wants us.”  
  
Remus wished that he’d thought of doing that in the first place, but better late than never. He asked the Room to display its hidden things and was gratified when Sirius’ eyes widened with wonder.   
  
“I still don’t understand how we never found this,” said Sirius, and he took one step, then another, along the path that wound through mountains of debris. “Would’ve been dead useful.”  
  
“To hide things or to find things to use to cause trouble?”  
  
“Both.” Sirius was reverent as he sifted through a pile of Fanged Frisbees and winged catapults to produce a rusty sword. “Why do you suppose someone needed to hide a life-sized stuffed troll? Why didn’t they just put a permanent sticking charm on it and use it to block the door to the potions classroom?”  
  
Remus couldn’t help snickering with amusement even though he’d just spotted the Vanishing Cabinet that had allowed Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts on the night of Dumbledore’s death. He was on the point of telling Sirius that they had to destroy it, but then wondered if it might be more useful to find its mate and keep it for their own use in the future.  
  
 _No_.  
  
Destroying it was better.  
  
He nudged Sirius. “Help me smash this so no one would think of repairing it.”  
  
Sirius flicked his wand into his hand. “With magic, or do you want to use that axe over there?”  
  
“Whatever makes you happy, Padfoot.”  
  
Sirius opted for a tricky bit of transfiguration followed by a blasting curse before looking to Remus for approval. (Had Sirius ever cared about Remus’ approval in any reality, or was this a sign that something was wrong? At least his magic was in perfect condition.)  
  
“Very good. Thank you.”  
  
“Thank me by turning this room into a beach in Majorca.”  
  
“Let’s go back outside. You can try it yourself.”  
  
Sirius didn’t need to be told to pace before the tapestry of dancing trolls three times; he’d watched Remus do it, and watching was usually enough for Sirius. The door reappeared and as soon as they opened it they were nearly blinded by sunlight bouncing off of white sand and turquoise water.  
  
“Forget your garden in Yorkshire,” Sirius decided. “ _This_ is where we need to go on a full moon.”  
  
Remus didn’t like to think of what the room would create if he asked it to give him a place to contain a werewolf on a full moon. He brushed the idea aside, and the two of them wandered along the edge of the water until it was time to meet Dumbledore.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
It took Dumbledore a fraction of a second to lift the spell he had placed on Sirius. Sirius popped into his dog form, wagged his tail enthusiastically, and returned to his human form.   
  
It took Dumbledore a few moments to explain that Lily’s death had left traces of magical protection on her sister’s home that would break if Harry were removed permanently, and that since Harry had already returned this summer, the protection would remain for another year as long as Sirius and Harry did not make a declaration that Harry was never to return. Sirius gave a curt nod which Remus expected meant _I will not argue about this right now_ rather than _I agree._  
  
“Now, Sirius, I would like to speak to Remus alone, so if you would wait—”  
  
“I have it on good authority that Hagrid still has your motorcycle,” Remus interrupted.   
  
Sirius could not have left the room more quickly if he had Disapparated.   
  
Dumbledore spared himself a moment of amusement before launching into a discussion of the Triwizard Tournament. Remus tried to look appropriately surprised and concerned, asking whether students hadn’t died in that competition in the past. Dumbledore promised that he was quite certain that that would not be a problem this year.   
  
_Not if I have anything to do with it,_ Remus thought to himself.  
  
He asked, too, about the plans to keep underage wizards from entering. He decided not to ask what would happen if a Death Eater disguised by polyjuice potion tricked the Goblet of Fire into believing that a fourth school was competing so as to enter an underage student’s name without his consent. The question seemed rather too specific.  
  
Dumbledore, too, refrained from asking the question that Remus was sure must be on his mind: _How did you break the curse on the Defense position?_  
  
He wondered whether Dumbledore thought Remus didn’t know what he’d done; or, worse, whether Dumbledore didn’t trust Remus to tell him what he’d done; or, worst of all, whether Dumbledore already knew exactly what Remus had done and was waiting for the opportune moment to… do what, exactly? Send him to Azkaban? He hadn’t broken any laws. But then, neither had Sirius.  
  
He was still wondering when Dumbledore dismissed him and he went to find Sirius.  
  


* * *

  
  
When he found Sirius, Sirius was leaning over the motorcycle.   
  
Hagrid was crying.  
  
 _“Stop making people cry, Padfoot!” _Remus mouthed from behind Hagrid.  
  
Sirius made an extremely rude gesture at Remus where Hagrid couldn’t see.   
  
Hagrid continued to ramble about taking Harry to his Muggle relatives on the day Lily and James had died, and how sorry he was that Sirius had suffered for so long when he’d been innocent, and how he knew from experience what Azkaban did to a person and he didn’t know how Sirius had lasted all those years, and how unjust the Ministry could be, why, think of poor Buckbeak…  
  
Now Sirius sent a pleading glance in Remus’ direction. Remus nodded and called out to Sirius as if he had only just arrived. (Hagrid hadn’t seem him approach, and luckily none of Hagrid’s pets were around to clue him in.) “Sirius, we need to leave now if we’re going to make that appointment this evening,” he said vaguely.  
  
“Sorry, Moony,” said Sirius quickly. “I lost track of time once I saw this beauty again.”  
  
Remus had seen few things in his life that were less beautiful. When Sirius had first enchanted the motorcycle, Remus had admitted that it had a certain incongruous charm, and of course it had sparkled under Sirius’ obsessive care. Now it was half-rusted and covered with the debris of the nests of a dozen species of animals. Remus only hoped that there were no acromantula eggs hidden in the gas tank.  
  
“Will it fly?” Remus asked, even though the answer was obviously no.  
  
“No. Won’t run at all.” said Sirius. “But soon she will. We just have to take her home, and I’ll fix her.”  
  
“We’ll wheel it to Hogsmeade, and I’ll Apparate it from there,” Remus decided, pointedly not referring to the motorcycle as her, because he loved Sirius and wanted Sirius to have everything he wanted but gendering a piece of Muggle machinery was stupid.  
  
“You know I’ll never forgive you if you break her when you Apparate,” said Sirius conversationally.  
  
Remus wasn’t particularly nervous, given that Sirius had instantly forgiven him for never doubting his guilt during his twelve years in Azakaban. “Try not to make Rosmerta cry again on your way to the fireplace,” Remus answered. He Disapparated before Sirius could answer.  
  
Sirius returned to the cottage a few minutes after Remus and immediately set about conjuring a shed for the motorcycle. For the rest of the evening, he was more purely happy than Remus had seen him since his release. He practiced Apparating. (And did it perfectly, of course; now that he was used to the cottage and was using magic for smaller things again, Remus wouldn’t give him a hard time about Apparating back here on his own.) He used cleaning spells on the motorcycle that would have put his cousin Andromeda’s famous housekeeping skills to shame. He transformed from human to dog to human again for no other reason than that he could.  
  
Remus pretended to review his lesson plans for the next school year, but really he just watched Sirius through the window.  
  
Night fell late in mid-summer, and Sirius made use of every bit of the long day. When he came back inside, Remus expected to see peace and content on his face.   
  
Instead, Sirius was coiled and guarded. He fixed his gaze on Remus, then nodded as if he had suspected something and now he was certain. He loped into the bedroom he had been using without acknowledging Remus and laid his hand on the bed.  
  
Remus had cast a warming charm on the bed, as he had every night since Sirius had returned. It was something of a tradition. At Hogwarts, house-elves placed warming pans between bedsheets for most students, but they were banned from one particular boys’ dormitory after an incident involving four of those pans, the entryway to the Slytherin common room, and two weeks’ detention for James and Sirius. James had quite nonchalantly begin casting warming charms on all of their beds each night. His mother had done it for him and it seemed quite natural for him to carry on doing it for the new members of his “family.” (The students who only knew James as the Quidditch star who would hex anyone who annoyed him would have been quite surprised by the way he fussed over his friends in private.) After a while, the four of them had started to take it in turns— whoever came up to the dormitory first always cast the charm on each bed. It was a fond memory for Remus, and he thought it must be one for Sirius, too, opposed as it was to the chill of Azkaban.   
  
Far from looking nostalgic, Sirius glowered.   
  
“Remus.” Not Moony. _Remus_. That wasn’t a good sign.  
  
Remus didn’t answer. He didn’t know why Sirius’ mood had shifted, and he wasn’t going to encourage Sirius one way or the other until he did know.  
  
Sirius didn’t let the silence linger. He never did. “Stop coddling me.”  
  
“Is this about the warming charm?” He knew it wasn’t, not exactly. Sirius had been suspicious before he’d touched the bed; the bed had been some kind of confirmation.  
  
“I thought it was just that… time is different in Azkaban. It’s longer, because it’s horrible, but it’s also shorter, because it keeps you stuck in your memories. I thought that was all it was. To you, Voldemort falling, James and Lily dying, that was twelve years ago. To me, it was last year. You were in the world when I was locked up, and I thought that was it. That was why you were different. So many years had passed for you that I didn’t know you. But today when we were at Hogwarts, when we were playing with that room— I know you. I _know_ you.”  
  
“Of course you know me,” Remus said quietly. Sirius prowled in a circle around him, not acknowledging that he’d said anything.  
  
“You were too calm when you saw me that first night in the Shrieking Shack. You had everything planned too perfectly. Then there’s the Defense job— it’s been cursed for ages, but the curse hasn’t come for you. I did everything I could to protect you from it, but that shouldn’t have been enough. I might have overlooked all of that until today when you were teasing me about making people cry. Madam Rosmerta looks at me and cries. Hagrid looks at me and cries. Even Minerva McGonagall looked at me that first night and cried. You were closer to me than all thee of those people put together, and you’ve been completely rational about everything, and that’s because there’s something else going on that you haven’t told me about.   
  
“You’ve always thought you were a great liar. The truth is, you’re a shit liar. You were when you were eleven years old and you are now. You’re lying about something and I want to know what it is.”  
  
Well.  
  
Let it be said that Sirius Black could be impulsive and self-righteous and moody and arrogant and even cruel.  
  
Never let it be said that Sirius Black was an idiot.  
  
It wasn’t that Remus hadn’t planned to tell him. He’d been looking forward to telling him once he’d had a chance to get his bearings about him. He didn’t have a choice, in any case; he couldn’t very well tell Sirius that he wanted to go to the library in Grimmauld Place and read about Horcruxes without some kind of explanation.   
  
“You’ve had a long day,” said Remus quietly. “Today was the first time you’ve spoken to anyone other than me since your name was cleared. You got your Animagus powers back, you got your motorcycle back, you’ve done fairly difficult wand magic for the first time. You barely sleep, you don't eat well. You have to be exhausted. Perhaps tomorrow—”  
  
“ _Now_ ,” growled Sirius. “The truth. All of it. _Now_.”  
  
“All right.”

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: My convenient head canon for purposes of this fic is that the vanishing cabinet was moved to the Room of Requirement by a house-elf because it was broken, then moved back to the corridor at a later time because there was some need for it, then moved back to the Room of Requirement by Draco.


	9. The Disagreement

Sirius stood with his arms crossed and his gaze fixed on Remus.   
  
Remus returned Sirius’ gaze and pretended that he knew what he was doing.  
  
He ought to have been more adept at conversations like this, considering that he had lived with a terrible, life-altering secret since the age of four.  
  
But then, he had _never_ revealed to anyone that he was a werewolf. He had always waited for someone to guess and then moved on (or, in the unusual case of Sirius and James, stayed exactly where he was). He hadn’t even told Dora himself; Sirius had done it for him, long before he’d realized that Dora was ever meant to be anything to him but a colleague.  
  
“Time travel,” said Remus said at last. “I know the future. Some of it. At least what I haven’t already changed.”  
  
Sirius looked amused, and then annoyed. “Try the truth, Remus. An illegal time-turner isn’t going to let you do much more than come back and start this conversation over, which you obviously didn’t do because there’s only one of you here.”  
  
“It wasn’t a time-turner.”  
  
“Exactly how else does one travel through time?”   
  
“I don’t know. I was dead. I think it was some kind of bureaucratic error.”  
  
“Because the afterlife is run by the same idiots as the Ministry of Magic?”  
  
Remus didn’t have any answer for that.  
  
Sirius sighed and tried again. “All right, I’ll play along. When did you die?”  
  
“Five years from now. Well, four years from now. It was the last stand against Voldemort. I knew Dolohov was going to kill me a second before it happened, and the next thing I remember was being in my bedroom in the house my parents had when I was four. Then Harry defeated Voldemort— let Voldemort Avada Kedavra him, that stupid prophecy— except it didn’t work. Harry lived. Again. And he called for me, and that changed something, I don’t know what, and I made a comment about wanting to go back if I couldn’t go forward, and then about a year ago I woke up on the way to Hogwarts. That’s how I knew that you were innocent. That’s how I knew to take every precaution to make sure Peter wouldn’t escape. That’s what happened the first time. Peter escaped, there was no way to clear your name, and you stayed in hiding.”  
  
“Harry defeated Voldemort? For real?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And he lived through it.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And you decided to make a mockery of his sacrifice so you could live?”  
  
“Yes. I mean, no—”  
  
“Voldemort was gone. The wizard we have spent our entire lives fighting was gone. The wizard who had kept Harry from having anything like the life he should have had was gone, and you decided to—”  
  
“I didn’t decide—” Remus began to argue, but the words died in his throat. Hadn’t he wondered the same thing? Hadn't he been horrified to realize that he’d brought Voldemort back to life, and then pushed those thoughts aside to enjoy spending a year doing a job he loved and living among people he loved?   
  
“You’re no better than Pettigrew,” Sirius spat. “You had something worth dying for, and you didn’t want to die, so you took the coward’s way out. You were right, what you said in the Shrieking Shack. I thought you were the spy because I thought you were a coward. I was right. You should have died. I would have died.”  
  
“You did die.”  
  
“Good!”   
  
“It wasn’t, really,” said Remus conversationally. “It was awful and meaningless and it broke Harry all over again.”  
  
“Don’t pretend you were concerned about Harry,” Sirius snarled. “If you were concerned about him and you had this little unlimited time travel magic at your disposal, you would have gone back and saved James instead of me!”   
  
“I didn’t have time to think it through! I didn’t know what was going to happen!”  
  
“That’s no excuse! You belittled my sacrifice, and worse, you belittled Harry’s sacrifice. I know I’m the one who was stuck in time for twelve years, but you’re the one who needs to grow up and realize that some things are worth dying for and you can’t just be selfish all the time!”  
  
“I don’t know how many ways I can tell you that I didn’t know what I was doing.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s obvious. You also forgot that it’s one of the central tenets of magic that you don’t mess around with time because you can’t know what the unintended consequences will be? You forgot that it’s completely immoral?”  
  
Remus scowled. He hadn’t known what would happen when he explained the situation to Sirius, but he certainly hadn’t expected this. Sirius, the professional rebel, quoting regulations about the restrictions on time travel?  
  
It wasn’t that he’d thought Sirius would thank him on bended knee for correcting the mess Peter Pettigrew had made… but he would have thought it more likely than this.   
  
Sirius’ face was contorted with rage and scorn, and Remus had no desire to listen to it. He hadn’t earned it. (He hadn’t earned most of the rage and scorn that had been almost universally directed at him since the age of four.)  
  
Remus reached for his wand and took two long strides toward the door.   
  
“ _Immobulus_!”   
  
Remus’ body stiffened without his consent as Sirius’ spell hit him in the back. In the back.  
  
Sirius strolled back into Remus’ line of sight. “You do not get to storm out,” said Sirius in a dangerously low voice. It was more unnerving than his yelling. “No dramatic exits for you today, my friend.” Sirius’ eyes narrowed. “If anyone makes a dramatic exit, it’s going to be me. I’ve earned it. And maybe it would be good for you. You’ve never been walked out on by someone who loved you.”   
  
Remus struggled against the spell, but it held fast.  
  
“You’re trying to tell me that most of wizarding society hates you because you’re a werewolf?” guessed Sirius. “It’s not the same. Not the same as when someone you care about betrays you. Your father was the world expert on hating werewolves.”  
  
(Remus’ father had been— probably still was— the world’s leading expert on non-human spiritous apparitions. His werewolf hatred had been much more commonplace. It was just bad luck that his statements had been made within earshot of the most notorious werewolf of modern times, and that that werewolf had decided to retaliate by biting Remus.)  
  
“Your father was the world expert on hating werewolves, but the minute his son was bitten everything changed for him. He didn’t dump you in a werewolf pack like Fenrir Greyback expected. He didn’t leave you with your mother while he went out and found himself a new life. He went to every healer he could find. He uprooted his life over and over so you would always be safe. He traveled all around the world looking for a cure. He taught you everything he could so you’d be able to take care of yourself. You told me once that when Dumbledore came to tell you that he wanted you to come to Hogwarts, your father tried to fight him because he thought Dumbledore was there to hurt you. And your mother was right there with him even though she didn’t have any magic and no one would have blamed her for saying she didn’t sign up for raising a werewolf child. They both thought the sun rose and set on you.”  
  
(Guiltily, Remus remembered his last day with Dora. She had pushed, none too gently, for a closer relationship with his father, who was the only living grandfather Teddy had. He’d known that she had been right. He’d known that he would have been heartbroken if Teddy had disappeared from his life, no matter how old Teddy got, no matter how much chaos Teddy brought. Nearly a year had passed since his second chance at life, and he hadn’t even attempted to see his father in person. He’d barely done more than send an owl at Christmas.)  
  
“And then,” Sirius continued, “you went to school. You went through those utterly ridiculous contortions to pretend that you weren’t sick. When we figured it out, we never did anything but stick by you.” Sirius snapped himself into Padfoot, then became human again. “That was for you. For you. When we left school, it didn’t change, not for James or for me. I thought you were the spy, yes, I did, but I didn’t do anything about it. I never tried to hurt you or turn you in. All I did was try to hide Harry from you. And if you had come to me at any time for help, I would have given it to you. James, too. James more than me because when I told him that I thought you were the spy, let’s just say he did not want to hear it.”  
  
(Sirius had said the same thing, under less fraught circumstances, the first time around. Sirius had always valued his friendship with James above all else, and that had included making sure that James stayed perfect in Remus’ mind when they dissected the disaster that had been Halloween, 1981.)  
  
“None of that’s what my life was like, you know. My parents never missed an opportunity to tell me what a failure I was. My mother used at least one Unforgivable on me, and I think she wiped my memory so I don’t even know the worst of it. Officially I ran away, but you know they considered themselves well rid of me. I’m sure they had a grand old time formally blasting my face off the family tree. That’s what my brother told me, anyway, the last time he spoke to me. He didn’t think I was worth keeping around, either.”  
  
(Remus didn’t think he had ever heard Sirius talk so bluntly about his family. Not in their childhood, and not when they had been living in Grimmauld Place after Voldemort’s return.)  
  
“And Peter framed me. He betrayed us all, he killed James, but I was the one he sent to Azkaban. He stood in the street and yelled that I was the one who sold James to Voldemort, and everyone who ever loved me or knew me believed him.”  
  
(Remus was actually glad to hear Sirius say it out loud. It was true.)  
  
“So you don’t get to walk out this time. You might have walked away from your family and your friends because of your self-pitying shit, and you probably walked out on Harry, too, since you take him submitting to _Avada Kedavra_ to bring down Voldemort so lightly. You’d probably walk out on your own son if you had one.”  
  
This time, Remus’ rage broke through the spell. Sirius was watching, though, and he was quick. “ _Immobulus_!"  
  
Remus froze again.  
  
“I am furious with you and you deserve it for being an arrogant berk by playing with time, and not even doing it right, because if you’d done it right, you would have brought James back! _Finite Incantantem.”_  
  
Remus shivered as the spell fell away.  
  
Sirius slammed the door so hard it fell from its hinges before he Disapparated with a pop.  
  
(Nasty temper he had, that Sirius Black.)  
  
 ** _To be continued._**


	10. Sirius, Inebriated

His mother had been his first example of how adults behaved, and at a young age he had sworn that he would do better.  
  
To be fair, he _had_ done better. His mother hadn't exactly set the bar very high.  
  
As an adult, he agreed with his mother on little but this: there were times when alcohol was the best way to keep going when the only way out was through.  
  
The first sip of firewhiskey had burned deliciously all the way down his throat and into his stomach. Right away, the overwhelming terror began to fade. James was dead, Peter had betrayed them, Sirius had spent most of his adult life in a frigid torture chamber reliving it all, and Remus had negated everyone's sacrifice by bringing Voldemort back to life. Harry had grown up with horrible Muggles and didn't know Sirius from any other wizard off the street. The world was collapsing around them again.  
  
The next sip— more of a gulp, really, now that his hand was steady— made the edges of his brain go fuzzy.  
  
It was _wonderful_. For twelve long years, his mind had not been his own. Any happy thought had been pulled away from him, replaced with the image of James' corpse lying in the wreckage of his house.  
  
But now if Sirius didn't want to think about James, or Remus, or Wormtail, or any of it, he could order another drink and his mind would soften even further.  
  
He started to talk to the people near him, who to his pleased surprise did not seem to recognize him. As the night grew longer, the pub grew louder and he couldn't really hear what anyone else was saying. His brain was too fuzzy to care whether he could hear them or not. It was just nice to be around people who did something other than scream in their sleep.  
  
All off a sudden, after the second or third drink, he noticed that the row of bottles behind the bar was very funny. He couldn't have said what was funny about it, and he didn't have to say because he was alone and he liked it that way, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was very funny for bottles of different shapes and sizes and colors to be lined up on a shelf.  
  
He remembered not to laugh, though.  
  
He was famous for blowing up a street and murdering people and laughing, and even if the only part he had done was laugh, if he laughed now people would scream and he'd be asked to leave and then there wouldn't be any more firewhiskey.  
  
Sirius so carefully held himself still, not laughing, not focusing too hard on the funny shelf, that he nearly fell off his stool. He wondered why that had happened. It couldn't be that he was drunk; he had only had three or four drinks, and he'd been able to split a bottle with James when they were seventeen and not turn a hair.  
  
But he had meant not to think of James, whose sacrifice their stupid friends had squandered. He obviously needed another drink. The bartender hastened to bring it.  
  
The world lurched unexpectedly when he put the empty glass down, and this time he wasn't able to stop himself sliding off the stool. He caught himself in time to make it look intentional, though, like he'd just decided that he ought to make a detour to the toilet down the hall. After four or five drinks, that wasn't a bad idea anyway, especially since he most decidedly was not terrified of the social interactions particular to crowded pub toilets after twelve years in a cell with a bucket in the corner.  
  
He emerged from the toilets a long moment later so set on reclaiming his spot at the bar and his sixth (seventh?) drink that he didn't notice the pretty little witch until he'd nearly run her over.  
  
She laughed. She was the sort of person who could laugh without reminding everyone in the world that she'd once blown apart a street full of Muggles, even if she hadn't.  
  
He flirted. He was surprised that he remembered how— he never really had been as much of a flirt as James and Remus claimed. In school, the girls had approached him without any effort on his part. After school, he'd been rather singularly concerned with not dying, leaving precious little time to collect notches for his bedpost.  
  
She kissed him. The firewhiskey had left his lips and tongue numb, but he could still taste the elderflower wine on her mouth. He kissed her back because it had been at least a dozen years since he'd kissed anyone at all and he had to catch up.  
  
He pushed her up against the wall and she kicked her legs free of her robes to wrap around his waist just as the bartender rounded to corner. "Take it outside," he ordered with an appraising glance.  
  
"Oh, we will," said the woman, and she grabbed Sirius' hand to lead the way.  
  
He pulled out his money to pay for what he had drunk and what she had drunk. He counted the galleons, sickles, and knuts correctly the first time, then doubted himself and counted again. The woman laughed.  
  
They stumbled a few times as they turned the corner into an alley before resuming their previous activity with increasing enthusiasm. This time, her hand slipped under his robes, closer and closer to his groin.  
  
All at once, she stopped.  
  
"You aren't enjoying this?" she asked.  
  
He had been, and he told her so, but he knew that she would take his body's word over his. And he wasn't about to explain that Azkaban wasn't exactly conducive to erections, and that he wasn't entirely sure that that part of his body was ever going to work again. So he told her goodbye, relieved that he'd never asked her name, and Disapparated.  
  
His first thought, upon finding that he hadn't splinched himself with his drunken humiliated out of practice Apparition, was to find another pub. His second thought was that he didn't want firewhiskey and he didn't want sex.  
  
What did he want, then? He was a free man. No dementors were chasing him. No prison was keeping him walled in.  
  
" _James_ ," he whispered, and he Disapparated again.  
  
This time, he fell to the ground hard when he reappeared. The strange burning in his ears told him that he had nearly hurt himself badly that time, or else that he was drunker than he'd thought.  
  
He knew the way, still, automatically. He walked through the unending twilight until he reached the cottage. It looked much as it had when he had last seen it almost thirteen years before. It had never been rebuilt; the ivy and nettles ran wild upon it. Had it been left as some sort of tribute, then?  
  
A sign answered his question as if he had asked it aloud:  
  
 _On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family._  
  
Sirius glared at the sign. How dare it reduce a lifetime of friendship and love and anger and betrayal and miracles and cleverness and laughter and bitterness and forgiveness and compassion and mystery and generosity and fear and pleasure and success and failure and utter devastation to three lines?  
  
He stood with one foot poised to climb through the wreckage and remind himself of every time he had been in each room, and what had been said, and what had hung on the walls, and what the food had smelled like, and how James had swaggered and Lily had exhorted and Harry had giggled.  
  
He pulled his foot back. What had been his, theirs, had been turned into something that belonged to everyone.  
  
He raised his wand to hex the sign, but tears pricked the back of his eyes and he couldn't think of a good hex, anyway.  
  
He turned on his heel and walked swiftly to the graveyard behind the church.  
  
The white marble headstones were easy enough to find. They were the ones that were most visited, most covered with flowers.  
  
Angrily, Sirius kicked the flowers away. "Mine," he told the darkness. "Not yours."  
  
" _You don't think that's a little over-dramatic, Padfoot?"_ asked James quietly. James wasn't usually so quiet unless he thought Sirius was very much in the wrong and on top of it was worried.  
  
"I didn't hallucinate you so you could sit in judgment on me," said Sirius.  
  
" _I don't think I count as a hallucination if you know perfectly well I'm only in your mind,"_ James retorted.  
  
Suddenly, Sirius felt very, very tired. He sank to his knees before the graves. The familiar names; the birth dates and death dates a scant twenty-one years apart. The epitaph was short: _The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death._  
  
"And that bit's more than a little dramatic, too," Sirius said, tracing one finger over the final word. Death.  
  
 _"Well, it's not as if I chose it," _said James, sounding mildly insulted. _"Our will clearly stated that I wanted it to say 'James Potter: English Quidditch Will Never Recover.'"_  
  
Sirius tried to laugh, but the laugh came out more like a sob as he tumbled the rest of the way to the ground. He leaned against the headstone for support.  
  
 _"You need to go home, Sirius,"_ said James.  
  
"I don't have a home."  
  
 _"Go back to Remus."_  
  
"I am not speaking to Remus."  
  
 _"That's a shame. He's a good person to talk to. We knew that right away, remember? We knew the first time we saw him."_  
  
"We should have listened when he told us he wasn't friend material."  
  
 _"Never listen to Remus when he talks about himself. Especially if it's bad. You need to ask him exactly what happened to change the timeline. It doesn't sound like any time travel I've ever heard about. It doesn't sound like he planned it."_  
  
"Why are you taking his side? You're my best mate!"  
  
" _Yes, well, you're the one who got me killed, not Remus, so I'm not sure where you get off blaming him for not fixing it."_  
  
"Could you please sound more like yourself and less like my guilty conscience?"  
  
 _"Considering that I'm not really here, no."_  
  
Sirius looked down at the ground beneath him. He had a horrible urge to dig it up, to see the coffins and the bones and the dust. He had, after all, spent the funeral in Azkaban. Since the Ministry hadn't bothered with the nicety of a trial, he had been safely ensconced on the island prison before the graves had been dug. He scraped at the ground with one hand.  
  
 _"You saw our bodies when it happened,"_ said James gently. _"You wouldn't have liked the funeral any more than you like the monuments."_  
  
"I deserved to suffer."  
  
" _I'm pretty sure Harry is the one who'll suffer if you carry on desecrating my grave, Padfoot."_  
  
Sirius snatched his hand back to his chest as if he had had no idea what it was doing. He would hurt Harry if he carried on, when it was already his fault that Harry had no parents. If he wanted to suffer, there were ways of suffering without involving the man who had treated him like a brother.   
  
Better than a brother.  
  
He raised his wand.  
  
 _"You nearly splinched yourself fifteen minutes ago. Be careful this time."_  
  
"I could find this place in my sleep." He smiled humorlessly. "Especially in my nightmares."  
  
A second later he slumped against the door. The pleasant effects of the fire whiskey had worn off, leaving only a vague buzzing under his skin and a desperate loneliness.  
  
He would do anything to make that loneliness go away. (Anything other than talk to another living being, that was.)  
  
He wouldn't mind picking a fight with one of the smug portraits that he expected still littered the house. Phineus Nigellus was always good for an argument. Maybe there was even a portrait of his mother.  
  
" _Alohomora_ ," he told the door with a tap of his wand. It swung open wide. Grimmauld Place recognized him and was beckoning him inside.  
  
He clenched his wand just a little too tightly as the walls closed in around him. The entryway was filthy with debris and dust. Spiders lurked in the corners; a mouse scampered across the floor. No doubt there were magical— and potentially dangerous— infestations too.  
  
As if on cue, a doxy flew into Sirius' line of vision. He was quick with a knockback jinx, but not quick enough to stop himself colliding with an umbrella stand (fashioned, it seemed, from a troll leg). Sirius and the umbrella stand both fell to the ground with a crash.  
  
 _"Who dares to disturb the house of my fathers?"_  
  
Sirius was glad that he was already on the floor when he heard his mother's voice.  
  
"She's been dead since 1985," he reminded himself aloud.  
  
But then, hadn't most of the world believed that Peter Pettigrew had died in 1981?  
  
His better instincts were screaming at him to get out of the house. He was exhausted and hungry and a little bit drunk, and he was in no condition to fight a presumed-dead woman who was even more crazy than she was powerful.  
  
His better instincts had never been in control when it came to his mother.  
  
He rose to his feet, adjusted his wand, and crept quietly into the hall.  
  
Much of the hall looked just as he remembered it— grimier, to be sure, but otherwise unchanged.  
  
One portrait, though, was new.  
  
She had had herself painted all in black. It wasn't uncommon for members of Sirius' family to dress after their name; he'd even done it himself, sometimes. But the black cap on her head told him that this was no fashion statement. She had remained in mourning for Regulus, and perhaps for her husband, too.  
  
 _"You will leave the house of my fathers!"_  
  
No command would have pleased him more during his childhood.  
  
Now, nothing pleased him more than the chance to refuse.  
  
He stood in front of the portrait so that she could see him clearly.  
  
"No, Mother," he said coolly. "I don't think I will."  
  
She made an incoherent cry of rage and brandished her clawed hands at him as if she were trying to reach him through the canvas. " _Shame of my flesh! Filth! Disgrace!"_  
  
"If you mean your portrait, I quite agree," said Sirius. "The artist really captured your personality. I don't recall your skin being so yellow, but by the time you died perhaps the outside reflected the ugliness within?"  
  
 _" KREACHER!"_  
  
The house-elf appeared with a crack. He bowed to the portrait and then turned to Sirius with an expression of utmost loathing. The utter distaste was refreshing after the tears and sympathy Sirius had been receiving from too many angles since his release.  
  
"What should Kreacher do, Mistress?" Kreacher asked the portrait.  
  
 _"Remove the blood-traitor from this house. He has brought shame upon the family name."_  
  
"Do you think there was a time when the family name wasn't shameful?" asked Sirius with mocking polite curiosity.  
  
"Kreacher will—"  
  
"Kreacher won't!" Sirius snapped. "I forbid you to remove me from this house." Kreacher froze, mutinous and frustrated. "You see, I own this house now, and that includes you," Sirius explained needlessly. Like the family he had served, Kreacher was mad but not stupid.  
  
He didn't need anyone to tell him what his place was.  
  
That didn't mean it wouldn't be _fun_ to tell him what his place was.  
  
"Kreacher, if I tell you to ignore that portrait, you will do it. If I tell you to clean this house until it shines, you will do it. If I tell you to drown yourself in the toilet, you will do it."  
  
" _Insolent_!" screamed the portrait.  
  
"Always," agreed Sirius. "Kreacher!"  
  
"What does Master wish Kreacher to do?" Kreacher's words dripped with disgust.  
  
"Master wishes for Kreacher to ignore him until he is called. Do not enter any room where I am. Do not do anything to harm me in any way. Do not touch me or look at me unless I summon you."  
Kreacher bowed and vanished.  
  
"I win," Sirius told his mother's portrait.  
  
 _"You are drunk, alone, and unwanted, "_ the portrait replied.  
  
Kreacher chuckled darkly from the next room. Sirius thought for a moment about forbidding the elf to laugh, but decided that he was too tired to bother.  
  
So tired.  
  
He wandered through the house, room by room, looking for immediate threats. He discovered more doxies, insects, and lizards, but nothing that was likely to devour him if he passed out for a few hours in his old bedroom.  
  
The number of objects that fairly radiated dark magic was more concerning. Why the hell hadn't the Ministry raided this place when it had passed into his ownership, as long as he was in Azkaban anyway? He would have given them permission if they'd needed it. But then, it was probably safer in his possession than in Cornelius Fudge's.  
  
His eyes fell on a Pensieve. Now that would be useful. He could demand that Remus show him exactly what had gotten them into this predicament. He wouldn't use this particular Pensieve, of course, because it was probably jinxed to burn out the minds of half-blood werewolves, and he didn't actually want to kill Remus.  
  
Getting one beloved friend killed had been quite enough.  
  
With that cheerful thought in his mind, he walked into the bedroom he had last visited a lifetime before. He couldn't resist a smirk at the photographs of motorcycles he had stuck to the wall. Apparently his parents had never been able to remove them. (He avoided looking at the pictures of girls in bikinis. He didn't need reminding of the incident outside the pub.)  
  
He cast every charm he could think of to check for hexes and enchantments, then every charm he could think of to protect himself, before collapsing atop the musty bed. For several hours, the darkest of the night, he drifted in and out of a troubled sleep.  
  
When the sun rose, Sirius Apparated to Diagon Alley and ate breakfast in the Leaky Cauldron while waiting for the shops to open. As soon as they did, he found one that had a new, reputable-looking Pensieve for sale.  
  
Then he spent the rest of the morning steeling himself for his next conversation with Remus.

* * *

  
Remus jumped when Sirius slammed the (newly repaired) front door open as hard as he could, and Sirius was meanly glad about it.  
  
Glad that he was recovered enough to evade protective spells in his human form.  
  
Glad that Remus was getting a little shock, since he'd certainly given Sirius a big one.  
  
(Glad that Remus hadn't changed any of the passwords or protections after Sirius had left.)  
  
He dropped the Pensieve on the table in front of Remus. "Show me your death," was what he meant to say, but "Show me _my_ death," was what fell out of his mouth.  
  
It was a reasonable request. Anyone would have made it; most people just weren't in a position to get it fulfilled.  
  
"Where did that Pensieve come from?" asked Remus. It was a good question. It was a better question than "why?" which was the question Remus had asked too many times in their lives.  
  
 _Why are we stealing that much food from the kitchen when we aren't even hungry and breakfast is in two hours?_  
  
 _Why is it important to see whether we can stick all of the furniture in this room to the ceiling?_  
  
 _Why would we want to light that on fire?_  
  
Sirius slapped the bill of sale and the accompanying spell booklet down beside the Pensieve. "I bought it. It's safe."  
  
"I've never done this," said Remus. "I don't know if I can. Only very powerful wizards—"  
  
"You _are_ a very powerful wizard," said Sirius, hoping it sounded like a statement of fact instead of a compliment. "And the real reason they're unusual is because they're gratuitously expensive. That, and a lot of people are cowards about having their memories floating around out there. You're not a coward, are you?"  
  
For an instant, Sirius could see Remus biting back the urge to lecture him on the nature of cowardice and where perceived cowardice overlapped with   
  
good sense. But Remus remained silent as he inspected both the bill of sale and the spell booklet.  
Then, still without a word, Remus drew his wand and touched it to his temple. A silver-white strand of liquid-air thought wafted into the Pensieve. A flash of unspeakable pain crossed Remus' face, and panic rose in Sirius' chest.  
  
 _I hurt him. I damaged his mind, and we need his mind. Why did you let me bait you, Moony? You know me. You know I would have calmed down. I can't lose you too, I won't lose you too, I would have realized that this is much too dangerous and for no real reason…_  
  
Now Remus locked eyes with Sirius. "Watch, if you must. I have no desire to relive it."  
  
"Perhaps not," said Sirius, regretting his demand more and more by the minute. Still, they had come this far. "But you have an absolute right to see what I see."  
  
"I forfeit any rights I haven't forfeited already."  
  
Something about the formality of it irritated Sirius again. "You need to come and explain what I'm looking at."  
  
Remus kept his face carefully neutral, as if he had practiced this. "Harry was fifteen, almost sixteen. He and his friends left school because he believed that you were in danger. You weren't, of course. It was a trap. There was a battle in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. I don't think you need any more context than that."  
  
They locked eyes again. "Fine," Remus conceded, and they leaned over the Pensieve together.  
  
 _The room was in chaos. The stone floor was covered with blood and broken glass. A dozen duels seemed to be taking place simultaneously when Dumbledore, white-faced and furious, appeared in the entryway. The children and the members of the Order froze. The Death Eaters ran._  
  
 _All the members of the Order froze except one: Sirius._  
  
 _All the Death Eaters ran except one: Bellatrix._  
  
 _They were stars locked in each other's orbit, as they had been from the day Sirius was born and placed in his oldest cousin's arms._  
  
 _From a distance, Sirius could see that his dueling form was a disgrace. He was too loose; he was too reckless. He would have been furious to see Harry behaving so flippantly in a life-or-death situation._  
  
 _Bellatrix sent a jet of red light in the direction of the other Sirius. Instead of blocking it, instead of taking a proper defensive position, instead of maneuvering Bellatrix so that one of the other Order members or Dumbledore himself could subdue her, the other Sirius ducked flamboyantly and laughed. "Come on, you can do better than that!" he shouted._  
  
 _The second jet of light hit him squarely in the chest. He fell backward toward a ragged veil hanging from an arch._  
  
 _All eyes were watching him as he vanished._  
  
 _Bellatrix screamed with triumph._  
  
 _Harry screamed with agony._  
  
 _Harry rushed toward the dais, calling Sirius' name, and was stopped from throwing his own life away only by Remus having the presence of mind to pin his arms to his sides._  
  
 _"There's nothing you can do, Harry—"_  
  
 _"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"_  
  
 _"It's too late, Harry—"_  
  
 _"We can still reach him—"_  
  
 _"There's nothing you can do, Harry. Nothing. He's gone."_  
  
 _"He hasn't gone! SIRIUS! SIRIUS!"_  
  
 _"He can't come back, Harry." Remus' face had crumbled and his voice was breaking, but he kept a firm grip on Harry as he writhed and fought. "He can't come back because he's d—"_  
  
 _"HE IS NOT DEAD! SIRIUS!"_  
  
 _Sirius could see the moment that reality set in for Harry. He slackened in Remus' grip and allowed Remus to guide him away from the dais._  
 _Remus' face was pale and every word he spoke was heavy with pain._  
  
 _Harry wrenched himself away from Remus, howling for Bellatrix's blood, and Remus' attention shifted to another wounded child as the scene dissolved._  
  
Sirius stepped back from the Pensieve. Before he could summon the courage to raise his eyes to Remus, though, Remus vanished with a swishing of robes. Half a moment later, Sirius heard the unmistakeable sound of retching.  
  
Right, then, Sirius had a reasonable amount of experience with being sickened by the memory of a friend's death. He strode, businesslike, into the kitchen for a glass of warm, salty water before following the sounds of Remus' gasps toward the toilet.  
  
Remus had managed to lock the door; Sirius didn't even bother to ask permission before ending the enchantment with a wordless wave of his wand.   
  
When someone was a total wreck because he was thinking about your death, you had to remind him that you were currently alive. That was just good manners.  
  
What definitely wasn't good manners was the flicker of joy in Sirius' chest when he'd seen how very hard both Harry and Remus had taken his ridiculous demise. Somehow, in the next two years, Harry would not only get to know him but get to love him. And Remus… well, Sirius had one friend left and that was so very much better than none.  
  
Remus was facedown on the floor, trembling, and at first didn't respond when Sirius traced circles on his back. "I'm right here," murmured Sirius. "I'm just fine." _Thanks to you, apparently._  
  
When Remus' breath evened out, Sirius seized him by the nape of his neck. "Rinse out your mouth," he ordered gruffly, handing the water to Remus. Remus rinsed and spat. "Anything left inside to come up?" Remus shook his head. Sirius flushed the toilet, set the glass to the side, and sank to the cool tiled floor beside Remus.  
  
"I'm sorry," said Sirius. It was the second time in his life he'd been on his knees beside a pale, shivering Remus, asking for forgiveness. The first time— after that prank when they'd been sixteen years old— he'd had James in his ear, telling him what to do and say and feel even if he didn't quite feel it for real. This time he was on his own. "I never should have asked you to relive that."  
  
"You had a right to see," whispered Remus hoarsely. "After what I've done—"  
  
"We won't talk about it now." He slid his arms around Remus and heaved them both to their feet.  
  
"Yes, we will," said Remus with as much strength as he could muster while collapsing into a chair in front of the fire. Midsummer though it was, the afternoon was cool and the warmth of the fire felt good. Sirius, ignoring Remus' protests, strode back into the kitchen where he set a teakettle boiling and grabbed two mugs and a loaf of bread. He didn't see any skewers for toasting the bread over the fire, so he lazily conjured a pair and carried them back to Remus with everything else.  
  
"Are you up to tea and toast?" Sirius asked.  
  
"You need to stop this," said Remus.  
  
"Making tea?" Sirius asked lightly. "It's not that complicated, and I'm not calling that crazy house elf from Gimmauld Place to do it."  
  
Remus sat up straight. "Kreacher?" he asked, suddenly tense and alert.  
  
"How could you possibly remember his name? You never even had the misfortune of meeting him, I made sure of it. My mother would have said the ugliest things she could think of about your mother, and Kreacher would have repeated her."  
  
"Please tell me that you did not go to your ancestral home and antagonize that house-elf!"  
  
"He belonged to my parents, so it's no surprise that my mere existence antagonizes him. There's nothing I can do about that."  
  
"Sirius…" There was a broken hopelessness in Remus' voice that sounded just like the broken hopelessness when he'd told Harry that Sirius was dead.   
  
"That house-elf was the one who sent Harry to the Ministry that day. He let Harry think you were in danger."  
  
Sirius hadn't expected that. "He's magically bound to me, whether either one of us likes it or not. He can't—"  
  
"He did. He was motivated to find a technicality and he found one."  
  
"I'll cut off his head. That will make us both happy."  
  
"It wasn't his fault." Remus sighed and closed his eyes. "That house isn't good for either of you."  
  
"I wonder if we can burn it down without violating the secrecy laws."  
  
"I'm not entirely against burning it down, but I want to see if there are books about Horcruxes first."  
  
Sirius was so startled that he almost dropped his toast into the fire. "Horcruxes? The time travel wasn't enough? You want to try for immortality through murder?"  
  
"No," said Remus, as if he couldn't quite tell whether Sirius was joking. (For the record: Sirius was joking. He was under no illusions that his joke was funny, however.) "Voldemort—"  
  
"Of course he did. We knew he wasn't completely human by the time he ran into Harry. Fine, no burning down Grimmauld Place until we're sure we don't need it."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Did you spend a lot of time there? In the other timeline?"  
  
Remus nodded. "You donated it as the headquarters for the Order."  
  
Sirius barked out a laugh. "That was generous of me."  
  
"It was clever, and it was effective until Dumbledore died."  
  
"Dumbledore dies, too?"  
  
"The war— it was as costly as the first one. I know that everything you said to be last night is true, Padfoot. But I still think we can do better this time. I think I've already done better for you since you aren't a fugitive locked up in Grimmauld Place."  
  
Sirius suppressed a shudder. One night had been bad enough. He almost preferred Azkaban. "We can do better," he agreed.  
  
Remus smiled a little.  
  
" _We_?"  
  
"You're not alone in this. Of course, now you have to tell me everything so I know what I'm trying to improve on."  
  
"Everything but two things," said Remus, and Sirius could tell that he had made this decision long ago.  
  
"What two things?"  
  
"Exactly how Dumbledore dies, because I don't want you to have to lie about that for three years."  
  
"And?" asked Sirius, wanting the other shoe to drop before he argued about the first one.  
  
"Who I married."  
  
Sirius let his toast fall from its skewer. It burst into flames as a grin split his face. "How am I going to be your wingman if I don't know who it is that you're destined to marry?"  
  
"You're not going to be my wingman."  
  
"I was a great wingman when James was dating Lily."  
  
Remus, evidently much recovered, snickered rudely.  
  
"I was the best man at their wedding and my speech was the stuff of legend."  
  
"That's certainly one way of putting it."  
  
"Did you ban me from the wedding the first time around?"  
  
Remus jerked his head in the direction of the Pensieve. "You were dead. I… wished you were there."  
  
"Was I still alive when you met her?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Did I approve?"  
  
"Every time you asked me about it I told you that you were seeing things that weren't there. But yes, I think you did."  
  
"So she must have been the one who did all the pursuing," Sirius mused aloud. "She must be very stubborn."  
  
"I ran away," said Remus. "You were right, what you said about me. I ran away twice. The first time— right after you died— I went and joined a werewolf pack as a spy for the Order. Totally useless, of course. They don't consider me their kind any more than wizards do. But it got me away from her. You'd think that would have been enough to make her reconsider. It wasn't. We were married a few days before the Ministry fell, and she— almost immediately— we took steps to prevent it, in the middle of a war, of course we did, but—"  
  
"So it was a wife and a baby you left behind when you died," said Sirius quietly. Another Harry. Another junior Marauder. Another war orphan.  
  
"I thought he would be a werewolf who'd tear her up from the inside. She wouldn't hear of it. Of course we didn't plan for him, but once she was pregnant she wouldn't consider ending the pregnancy. War or no war. Child-to-be legally considered an abomination or not. I thought she would be safer if I left—"  
  
"Please tell me someone kicked your arse since I wasn't there to do it."  
  
"Harry did."  
  
Sirius raised his hand in victory.  
  
"The whole thing lasted about two hours, but you were right. I did walk out on my own son."  
  
"You panicked until someone helped you see sense," said Sirius, feeling much more generous than he had the day before. "What was his name?"  
  
"If I tell you his name, I'm afraid you'll guess hers. I don't want to do anything that keeps him from existing. I didn't live long enough to really know him, but I lived long enough to know that he was perfect. Terrible timing and all."  
  
Sirius shrugged. "Just like Harry. Marauder tradition." Remus looked at Sirius curiously. "You can't have thought Lily decided that she wanted to be a pregnant teenager in the middle of a war, did you?"  
  
"I never asked," said Remus delicately.  
  
"Spell failed." Sirius snickered. "Apparently it happens a lot if you're… distracted when you cast it."  
  
"Where were you to tell me this last time?"  
  
"Dead," Sirius said, and it was getting easier all the time to be delighted at his second chance. He wasn't going to miss out on having another godson.   
  
"You know I'm going to know the first time I see the two of you together. Is she pretty?"  
  
Remus smiled in a besotted way that Sirius had never seen before. "Beautiful."  
  
"Can't wait to meet her. Have I met her already?"  
  
"You know half of the witches in Britain, Padfoot. Who can keep track of which ones you've met and which ones you haven't?"  
  
Sirius spent the rest of the evening eating toast and naming every woman he had ever met in the hopes that Remus would give something away. Remus, for his part, answered yes and no in a random pattern that brought Sirius no closer to a conclusion.  
  
By the time night fell again, they had both slid from their chairs to lounge on the floor in front of the fire the way they had once done in the Gryffindor Common Room.  
  
For the first time in thirteen years, Sirius slept through the night without a single troublesome dream.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The Pensieve scene of Sirius' death is borrowed almost unaltered from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Not mine.


	11. The Alley

Remus' first thought when he blinked awake was that he was far too old to sleep on the floor, even in front of a warm fire and beside his oldest friend.  
  
His second thought was that said friend would never cease to amaze him.  
  
Sirius jumped to his feet, bright-eyed, grinning, and none the worse for the eight-plus hours he had spent on what was really a very hard floor.  
  
"Get up, Moony!" Sirius shouted, already in the next room. "We need to be at Diagon Alley when the stores open."  
  
"Why?" Remus mumbled as he pulled himself into an upright position. He didn't really expect an answer, but to his surprise he got one. It wasn't a particularly informative answer, but it was an answer.  
  
"We need to go shopping."  
  
"For anything in particular?"  
  
"Clothes. Food. Wands. Presents for Harry. We're going to get him tomorrow, so we need to be ready."  
  
That explained Sirius' good mood, at least.  
  
Sirius bounded back into view. "I would ask you if you minded bringing Harry back here, but I don't actually care if you mind."  
  
Remus laughed. "I don't."  
  
"We can have lunch in the Alley, and then come back here so you can give me the quick version of the history we're trying to avoid. Give me the details when he goes off to see the World Cup with his friends. He said in his letter that's what he wants to do at the end of August?"  
  
"Yes." Remus already had particular plans for that little event, but there was no reason to get into them with Sirius just yet. Sirius seemed to relish being the one who was in charge for the moment, and Remus was happy to see him happy.

* * *

  
Remus was less amused when Sirius frog marched him into Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions and informed Madam Malkin that they were both to be measured for a dozen sets of robes (for various occasions, if not necessarily _all_ ).  
  
"No," he told Sirius as Madam Malkin ducked away, calling for her assistant.  
  
"I've missed a few of your birthdays. This is a present," said Sirius nonchalantly.  
  
"No," Remus repeated. He had never taken money from his rich friends when they'd been children, and he certainly wasn't going to start now.  
  
Sirius glanced around, obviously assuring himself that they were alone. "You ruined my death," he whispered.  
  
"So you can go to Hogwarts and commiserate with Moaning Myrtle," Remus hissed.  
  
"And while I'm there, I'll tell Dumbledore what you did."  
  
Remus' voice died in his throat. He didn't believe Sirius, not for one second. Sirius had never been one to tell tales. It went against his particular code of honor, no doubt because he had spent his formative years around a brother and cousins who were all too eager eager to tell tales on him. Besides, for all his heroics during the first war, Sirius had never quite been Dumbledore's man the way Remus and James had been. "I know you wouldn't," said Remus hoarsely at last.  
  
"You can find out. Or you can dress as a proper professor. We wouldn't want anyone to think that there's anything… peculiar about you. Perhaps next time I'm asked to give an interview, I'll—"  
  
" _Be quiet!_ " he snapped as Madam Malkin and her assistant returned with bolts of cloth floating in front of them.  
  
And so Remus came to be blackmailed into allowing Sirius to buy him the nicest clothing he had had since the age of four, when his illness had permanently derailed his parents' finances.  
  
The new cloak was unbearably soft against his cheek.  
  
He'd been dead.  
  
He'd been dead, and that should have taught him that life was too short to object to gifts willingly given.  
  
Sirius must have seen his thoughts reflected on his face, because he sent a victorious smirk over Madam Malkin's head at Remus.  
  
"You know you're still thirty pounds underweight and none of that will fit properly when your chest and shoulders broaden out again," Remus retorted meanly.  
  
"We'll leave extra folds in the fabric and adjust them in less time than it would take you to tell us what you need," injected Madam Malkin.  
  
"Thank you," said Sirius politely as he smirked even harder.

* * *

  
Further along the street was a shop that specialized in Muggle clothes. This time, Remus didn't bother arguing with Sirius. "Now where?" he asked wryly when their packages had been made smaller and lighter by a deftly applied series of charms.  
  
Sirius, suddenly a shade paler, nodded across the street. "Ollivanders."  
  
Remus didn't have the heart to tease him. The bond between a wizard and a wand was special. A wand was an extension of one's own identity. He imagined that losing a wand felt like losing a piece of oneself. Not in the same way that, say, becoming a werewolf felt like losing oneself, but not entirely different, either.  
  
All but the most confident children worried for a moment when they passed through the door of Ollivander's shop that no wand would have them.  
  
 _"The wand chooses the wizard,"_ Mr. Ollivander might say. _"And none of them chose you. Most peculiar. I'm afraid I simply refuse to sell a wand which has not chosen its owner. My family has not done such a thing since we opened this shop in 382 BC. Perhaps you could try one of the less prestigious shops where the wands are not so finely made…"_  
  
Sirius pushed open the door a little too hard, then stood frozen on the spot so that Remus had to slip awkwardly around him.  
  
"It hasn't changed at all," said Sirius as he looked around the narrow, shabby store. "I'm sure some of these wands were here 25 years ago, a little less dusty."  
  
"Good afternoon, Mr. Black," said a soft voice. As was his habit, Mr. Ollivander had appeared from nowhere. If he had heard Sirius' comment about the dust, he made no mention of it. "I was beginning to wonder if I would see you after all."  
  
"I've only been allowed to have a wand for a week or so," Sirius pointed out.  
  
"And a week can seem an eternity to one such as you. I remember your first wand. Ebony and dragon heartstring. Meant for a bold wizard who held fast to his beliefs. Quite a beautiful wand. It was snapped?"  
  
Sirius nodded. "The moment they arrested me."  
  
Remus hadn't known that, or if he had, he had forgotten in the fuzziness of shock and grief. There were entire stretches of late 1981 and early 1982 that he didn't remember very well.  
  
It was one more sign that the Ministry had never intended to give Sirius a fair trial. The wand should have been preserved in the event that Sirius was exonerated. Someone should have cast _priori incantantem_ to determine whether it had cast the spell that had destroyed the street.  
  
"So much needless destruction," said Mr. Ollivander so vaguely that Remus almost wondered whether he meant the wands lost in battle or the human lives. "Wand arm out." Sirius held out his right arm, and Mr. Ollivander's magical tape measure flitted about Sirius' body. Remus was half-inclined to ask Mr. Ollivander whether the distance between a wizard's nostrils really mattered to a wand, but refrained.  
  
"I miss it," said Sirius quietly. "The one I've been using works well for me— surprisingly well— but there's nothing like the wand that actually chooses you. You're right, it was beautiful. So jet black that people stopped and looked at it. Even my parents thought I must have done something right to have it choose me."  
  
The sadness in Sirius' voice made Remus want to put a comforting hand on his shoulder right then and there, but the tape measure was still doing its work. With all the mourning Sirius had done for James and Lily, Remus doubted that Sirius had ever spared the energy to mourn his wand before.  
  
"You've loved different people in different ways in your life," Mr. Ollivander said, sounding more focused now. "You will love your new wand differently, but not less. Let's start with dragon heartstring again. I don't believe that you will match with unicorn hair."  
  
"Too moody," said Sirius. "I don't want to worry about my wand sulking. If anyone's going to sulk, it's me." He glanced over his shoulder at Remus.   
  
"Your wand is unicorn hair. Has it ever done that?"  
  
"No, because I don't mistreat it," said Remus. Mr. Ollivander glanced at him for the first time and gestured that Remus should hold out his wand. Feeling eleven years old again, Remus did.  
  
"Excellent craftsmanship if I do say so myself," said Mr. Ollivander, nodding in approval. "Cypress favors nobility of character. The wand chose well."  
  
"And his wand hates me," injected Sirius. "Always did. So whatever the opposite of cypress is— the least noble wood—"  
  
Mr. Ollivander politely ignored Sirius's suggestion that any wood was the least noble. "Unicorn hair prefers its own wizard." He thrust a wand into Sirius' hand. "Dragon heartstring and fir. The survivor's wand, my grandfather used to call a fir wand. Perfect for an intimidating personality who favors transfiguration."  
  
"Intimidating?" asked Sirius innocently. He aimed the wand at the rickety chair that sat in front of the counter and transfigured it into a plush sofa with one wave.  
  
"Very good!" called Mr. Ollivander in delight, and Remus was impressed, too, that Mr. Ollivander had chosen correctly on the first try.  
  
But Sirius frowned as he returned the chair to its original state. "It doesn't feel right."  
  
"Then we shall try another, of course."  
  
The next wand was spruce, known for matching with flamboyant and dramatic wizards. Remus turned his head away at Mr. Ollivander's explanation, but he sensed that Sirius had heard him chuckle nonetheless. Sirius completed the same transfiguration, but Remus could see that he had to labor to complete the spell. Mr. Ollivander snatched the wand back before Sirius could reverse his work.  
  
The third wand was pine— known to be sensitive to non-verbal magic, another of Sirius' specialties— but Sirius was unable even to cast _Lumos_ successfully.  
  
"It's not the wood," Ollivander determined. "It's the core. You're an unusual customer and you need an unusual wand."  
  
"Phoenix feather?" asked Sirius curiously. "I don't know if I've ever met anyone with a phoenix feather wand."  
  
"Harry's wand is phoenix feather," Remus informed him. "So is Lord Voldemort's."  
  
Mr. Ollivander nearly dropped the box he was holding. Remus apologized quickly as Sirius reached for the wand. "Aspen," Mr. Ollivander explained. The wand looked as if it had been made of ivory rather than wood. It was as light as Sirius' first wand had been dark. "It favors the strong-minded and accomplished dualists."  
  
Sirius grinned. The wand sparked almost before he touched it. "Perfect," breathed Sirius. He returned Mr. Ollivander's chair to its original form before laying seven galleons on the counter.  
  
Then he thrust the wand at Remus. "Try it," he demanded. "I want my wand to hate you as much as your wand hates me."  
  
Remus rolled his eyes. " _Lumos_." The wand flickered reluctantly, as if Remus had been a first year student struggling under Flitwick's gaze.  
  
Sirius laughed. "Good." He pulled the wand he had been using from the inside pocket of his robe and replaced it with the new one. Then he handed the other wand to Mr. Ollivander. "Did you make this?" he asked. "We don't know where it came from."  
  
Mr. Ollivander started at the sight of the wand. "Elm and dragon heartstring," he said. "Deceptively flexible. You really don't know to whom this wand belonged?"  
  
Sirius looked sharply at Remus. Remus shook his head to indicate that he was as much in the dark as his friend. If he was going to tell Sirius about altering the future-past, he certainly wasn't going to bother lying about where he'd found an abandoned wand.  
  
"It belonged to your brother."  
  
"To— to Regulus?" Sirius' voice was rough.  
  
"I sold it to him when he was eleven years old. A number of years later he came back without it, said it no longer suited him and he wished for a new wand."  
  
Sirius' brow wrinkled in thought. "I don't ever remember him replacing his wand. But we weren't very close by that time."  
  
"You said it worked well for you. I suppose this explains why."  
  
Sirius took the wand back and gently placed it in the box in which his new wand had come. He added the new box to their collection of packages, thanked Mr. Ollivander a final time, and ushered Remus out the door.  
  
"Sirius," Remus began.  
  
"Let's go eat," Sirius said abruptly. "I want steak. I can taste again, did I tell you?"  
  
"I figured as much from the way you were enjoying that toast last night." Remus accepted the change of subject. "No one enjoys toast that much unless it's the first thing he's been able to taste in weeks."  
  
"Not the first thing," said Sirius. "The first thing was the elderflower wine this witch was drinking before I snogged her night before last."  
  
 _"Who were you snogging?" _If Sirius had wanted to shock Remus (and he usually did), he had succeeded.  
  
"I don't know. Didn't get her name."  
  
"You just snogged someone you didn't know."  
  
"You've never done that?"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Everyone else has."  
  
He thought about Dora snogging someone she didn't know and felt a surge of jealousy in his chest. It was bad enough that she might currently have a perfectly nice boyfriend who she did know.  
  
Sirius draped a casual arm over Remus' shoulders. "Probably it wasn't your wife I kissed, but if you want to make sure I never do, you could just tell me who she is."  
  
"Not concerned," said Remus.  
  
"You look concerned."  
  
"I'm not."  
  
"A few more months of good food and nice clothes, and I'll be very handsome again."  
  
"I'm sure we all look forward to it."  
  
"You said I met her. Did she think I was handsome?"  
  
"That wasn't something we discussed very often."  
  
Sirius laughed. "You just discussed it occasionally?"  
  
It was something they'd discussed exactly once.  
  
I _t was a spring night and Remus and Dora were lying flat on their stomachs outside a Death Eater's house. They hadn't expected to end up on surveillance duty, and they had neither an invisibility cloak nor a potion to conceal themselves. Luckily, the hedgerow gave them decent cover in addition to scenting the warm air with lilac._  
  
 _It was too beautiful a night, and too beautiful a place, for Death Eaters._  
  
 _Besides, no one was home and it was starting to look as if no one would come home._  
  
 _"Is the Order everything you thought it would be?" Remus asked. "Lying in the dirt for hours on end while nothing happens?"_  
  
 _Her hair was its natural brown color that day, a necessary concession to the undercover nature of the job. "I may be new to the Order, but I'm an experienced enough Auror to know that sometimes it's better if nothing happens."_  
  
 _"True. We would be rather under-prepared if Lord Voldemort chose tonight to visit his friend."_  
  
 _She grinned. "You and me? We could take him. At least, we could hold him off until the others got here. That's probably what we should do. Kingsley and Mad-Eye would be jealous if we didn't let them help."_  
  
 _"Not to mention Sirius. He didn't spend twelve years in Azkaban to miss out on this."_  
  
 _Dora cocked her head with interest at the mention of her cousin. "He's still handsome, isn't he, even after Azkaban?"_  
  
 _In retrospect, Remus had realized that it was an innocent enough remark. Dora had been naturally curious to meet her long-lost cousin. And it was true— Sirius had always been remarkably handsome, and not even Azkaban could quite ruin his great good looks._  
  
 _In the moment, Remus' face hardened with dislike. "I suppose you've fallen in love with him, then?" he asked derisively. "He always got the women."_  
  
 _Dora, too, went rigid with anger. "You'd know perfectly well who I've fallen for, if you weren't too busy feeling sorry for yourself to notice," she snapped._  
  
 _He should have kissed her on the spot._  
  
 _Instead, he pretended to have no idea what she could possibly have meant._  
  
 _Within weeks, Sirius was dead and Remus had fled to live with the werewolf pack._  
  
"Moony?" Sirius stopped walking and grabbed Remus by the arm. "Why won't you tell me who she is?"  
  
He glanced around and lowered his voice. "Because I'm afraid of changing that part of the timeline even more than I already have. I've already changed the circumstances under which we meet. I've changed who I will be, and who she will be, when we do cross paths. If I also change how you react when you see her—"  
  
"Did I react badly? Did I kiss her?"  
  
"No. I was jealous anyway, because I was a fool, but you never did anything like that. The two of you were friends, and that was all."  
  
"Why are you waiting to cross paths with her? Why don't you make up an excuse to go meet her?"  
  
 _Because she's so young. Because if we marry earlier, there may be no Teddy. Because she may not want me when we don't have a war to bring us together._  
  
"I don't want to change things more than I have to." It was Remus' turn to change the subject. "You wanted food? Let's eat."

* * *

  
The steak was delicious and did quite a lot to mitigate the trials of the morning. Even the _Daily Prophet_ photographer who took their picture without permission didn't manage to ruin the meal.  
  
"How do you buy food?" asked Sirius as they left the restaurant.  
  
"Padfoot, you just bought food quite successfully."  
  
"Not like that. Food you eat at home."  
  
"Some things have changed since you've been in Azkaban. That has not."  
  
"I didn't know before I went away," Sirius protested. "I grew up in a house with a house-elf who did what my mother asked. No one cared what I thought and I had no idea what went into food being on the table anyway. Then I went to Hogwarts, and we had a kitchen full of house-elves there. And after that— I had my own place, but I was always on duty with the Order or with James and Lily." He shrugged. "Lily knew what she was doing."  
  
Sympathy and guilt flashed through Remus. He had spent too much of his life envying Sirius. He had been jealous of his friend's good health, great looks, and vault of riches. The family into which Sirius had been born had bestowed all of those gifts upon him.  
  
And had left him not knowing how to buy food.  
  
"Come on," Remus said with a smile. "I think you'll be able to figure it out pretty quickly."  
  
"I want to have things Harry likes. I want him to think I know what I'm doing."  
  
"Make sure he has a treacle tart, and he'll be happy with whatever else you feed him," Remus advised.  
  
(By the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry's particular fondness for treacle tart had become so universally known that Remus wouldn't have been surprised if the dessert had been renamed after him by popular acclaim. He wondered, for the ten-thousandth time, whether he had done Harry a terrible disservice when he'd changed the course of all their lives.)  
  
"Tomorrow," said Sirius over and over for the rest of the day. He put aside his request to hear more about the future-past, deciding that they could deal with it after Harry went to visit his friends. Instead, he rushed around the cottage, doing everything he could to make it more fit for Harry.  
  
"He likes you," Remus assured Sirius. "He can't wait to see you."  
  
It was an understatement. He remembered how deeply attached Sirius and Harry had been. Watching them together had been a beautiful thing.   
  
Remus tried to put aside a pesky thought that kept floating to the top of his mind.  
  
 _I hope I haven't ruined it…_  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The dialog in the Remus/Tonks flashback is from the Pottermore website (or whatever it's called nowadays), as is the wandlore.


	12. Harry and the Letters

Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid dream with his hands wrapped tightly around his sheets.

He hated dreaming of dementors.

He especially hated dreaming of watching dementors suck the soul out of his godfather's body while Harry was powerless to help.

For most of his life, Harry had been resigned to remaining with the Dursleys, but for the past few weeks he had held out a tantalizing hope that he might, after all, get to leave and stay with someone who didn't despise him.

The hope was almost worse than the prospect of remaining with his aunt, uncle, and cousin indefinitely.

Almost.

Harry climbed out of bed, crossed to the window, and drew back the curtains to survey the street below.

Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.

Harry sighed and sank back onto the bed. He didn't know what he had expected. Sirius probably wasn't going to take him away from the Dursleys under the cover of night.

Sirius might not take him away from the Dursleys at all.

Yes, Sirius had offered, but he clearly hadn't expected Harry to agree. Now that Sirius was free after twelve long years in Azkaban, he might not want to bother with an almost-fourteen-year-old godson he didn't even know.

Sirius had been free for almost a week, and he hadn't come for Harry yet.

Harry knew that he wasn't going to get back to sleep. For one thing, his mind was too full of thoughts of dementors and long-lost godfathers. For another thing, his stomach was painfully empty.

The only thing that distracted him on nights like this was the packet of letters hidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboard under his bed. He pulled them out now and read them in order.

The first letter came from Ron and was dated only a few days after they'd last seen each other at King's Cross station:

_ Dear Harry, _

_ Dad let me go to Scabbers' trial. He reckoned that I had a right under the circumstances. (Mum really didn't want me to go but she agreed as long as I stayed with Percy and Bill. Fred and George aren't allowed to come and they're jealous, it's great.) It started today but nothing interesting happened yet. _

_ Loads of people are here and one of them is Andromeda Tonks. She came up to my brothers and me. She is Sirius' cousin. She says to tell you that you talked to her daughter when they were taking Scabbers to Azkaban. She just saw Sirius in his cell. _

_ She says that she thinks there is a better chance of everything coming out all right if you tell everyone that Sirius is your godfather and you like the Minister of Magic or something like that. She doesn't think I'm doing a very good job explaining, she she is going to write her own letter and we'll send them together with Hermes. _

_ Percy also doesn't think I'm doing a very good job explaining (big surprise), and he doesn't like all of the things Mrs. Tonks said about the Ministry but he will let us borrow Hermes because he is taking the Scabbers thing personally. Scabbers was his rat longer than he was mine, you know. Hermes is very fast so you should get this letter in a couple of hours and be able to do something right away. You need to do it right away because they're going to put Sirius on trial tomorrow. _

_ See you at the end of summer for the World Cup! Don't let the Muggles get you down! _

_ —Ron _

Harry missed Ron terribly. At least if Sirius did decide that he didn't want Harry after all, Harry would still be invited to stay with the Weasleys for the end of the summer. Harry was very much looking forward to the Quidditch World Cup, but even if the Weasleys weren't able to get tickets, the worst day at their house was a thousand times better than the best day at Privet Drive.

He set Ron's letter aside and moved to the next letter. This one was written in unfamiliar handwriting, and Harry had had to read parts of it twice to figure out exactly what his new correspondent wanted:

_ Dear Harry, _

_ My name is Andromeda Tonks. Your godfather Sirius Black is my cousin— my favorite member of my family although I must admit there was never much competition. Your friend Ronald Weasley has been kind enough to make an introduction and ensure that this letter reaches you. _

_ You may or may not know that Sirius was not given a trial when he was first arrested in 1981. It would be embarrassing for the Ministry of Magic to admit its mistake now. However, I believe you have the power to ameliorate the Ministry of Magic's concerns. As the Boy Who Lived, you enjoy immense popularity. (This is why I was required to seek out your friend in order to get a message to you. Your friend was not aware of the extent of the restrictions placed on contacting you, and he tells me that you most likely are not aware either.) _

_ To be blunt, the Minister of Magic holds an outsize amount of discretion in this matter. Less important than Sirius' innocence is the Minister's concern about how Sirius' innocence will make the Ministry appear. The Minister must be made to see Sirius' innocence as a positive thing for him, personally.  _

_ Therefore, I suggest that you make the following statement to the Daily Prophet or to the Minister in person if the opportunity to approach him presents itself: _

**_ I admire Minister Fudge for his bravery in reevaluating the events that took place in the aftermath of my parents' deaths. A lesser man might be afraid to discover that the Ministry was once in error and thus compound the damage already done. Minister Fudge, as an honorable and confident man, is willing to acknowledge that not every decision made in great stress during difficult times can be the right decision. I feel grateful to Minister Fudge for permitting the trials Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black to move forward. _ **

  
**_My parents loved and trusted Sirius Black above all others and asked him to be my godfather. I have spoken to him and I have seen what I believe to be irrefutable proof of his innocence. He is my last link to my parents and I look forward to getting to know him better in the event that the Wizengamot clears him of all charges._**

 _Please copy the above statement in your own handwriting and send it to the Daily Prophet. Better yet, take the Knight Bus to the Daily Prophet's main office and offer it to them in person._

 _If it is not possible to leave your relatives' home, please telephone me at the number on the back of this parchment. My husband is Muggle-born and understands Muggle means of communication better than most wizards._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Andromeda (Black) Tonks_

The request had seemed ridiculous. No one who had ever met Harry would believe that he had written the statement.

But Harry had supposed that that didn't matter and had set himself to copying it out as carefully as he could.

Mrs. Tonks had enclosed fare for the Knight Bus. The fare, though, wasn't really the problem. The problem was getting out from under the Dursleys' noses. On the one hand, the Dursleys hated Harry and wanted him to be out of their sight as much as possible. On the other hand, the Dursleys didn't want Harry to do anything that he might enjoy, and they were convinced that he enjoyed everything in the magical world.

In the end, he'd simply slipped out the front door when the Dursleys were watching television, walked to an empty corner of the street, and summoned the Knight Bus. It had delivered him to the Daily Prophet's office, where he had presented his statement and posed for a photograph. He'd even shaken a few hands and felt like an idiot, but he supposed that if it helped keep Sirius out of Azkaban it was worth it. He'd done stupider things.

He'd returned to find that the Dursleys hadn't even noticed his absence.

The next letter always made his stomach give a lurch of joy.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I can't believe I'm writing you these words, but we have succeeded. Sirius is free._

 _Sirius is eager to meet you under less fraught circumstances. He will come to collect you in a week or so after certain arrangements have been made— unless, of course, you would prefer that he not do so._

 _For now he is staying with me. Please let us know if you have any problems at all._

 _—RJL_

Tonight, though, Harry scowled as he read the words over and over again. Did "any problems at all" include problems like being lonely and bored and constantly hungry?

Somewhere down the hall, Dudley snored.

Dudley's life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home from the summer with his end-of-year report.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual: Aunt Petunia always insisted that Dudley was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn't understand him, while Uncle Vernon maintained that "he didn't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway." They also skated over the accusations of bullying in the report— "He's a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!" Aunt Petunia had said tearfully.

However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well-chosen comments from the school nurse that not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could explain away. No matter how much Aunt Petunia wailed that Dudley was big-boned, and that his poundage was really puppy fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn't stock knickerbockers big enough for him anymore. The school nurse had seen what Aunt Petunia's eyes— so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on her gleaming walls, and in observing the comings and goings of the neighbors— simply refused to see: that far from needing extra nourishment, Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale.

So— after many tantrums, after arguments that shook Harry's bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Petunia— the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by Smeltings had been taped to the fridge, which had been filled with fruits and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called "rabbit food." To make Dudley feel better about it all, Aunt Petunia had insisted that the whole family follow the diet, too. Aunt Petunia seemed to feel that the best way to keep up Dudley's morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more to eat than Harry.

Which was why Harry was currently too hungry to sleep.

He should have bought food during his excursion on the Knight Bus, but he hadn't wanted to chance getting caught with it. He also should have sent Hedwig to his friends requesting that they send him food, but some part of him had thought he might be leaving with Sirius at any minute…

He would send Hedwig to the Weasleys with a request for help as soon as she returned from her nightly hunt, he decided.

He moved on to the most recent letter, this one from Hermione. It had arrived with Hedwig only hours before.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I know that you haven't subscribed to the Daily Prophet. You really should— it's so good to keep up with the wizarding world! Anyway, I saw this picture of Sirius and Professor Lupin and I wanted to make sure you saw it too. They look so intent on whatever they're discussing. Sirius looks much better, don't you think?_

 _I can't believe they didn't even try him when it first happened, it's disgusting. Are you going to live with him now? Are you with him already? I do hope you never have to go back to your Aunt and Uncle._

 _Either way, see you at Ron's house at the end of the summer? I'm so looking forward to the Quidditch World Cup. I don't really care about Quidditch, unless you're playing, but will be fascinating to meet so many wizards from all around the world!_

 _Love from,_

 _Hermione_

 _P.S. I'm keeping the picture of YOU from when you gave that statement about Sirius. How did that happen?_

He studied the photograph Hermione had clipped from the newspaper. Sirius and Professor Lupin obviously had not known that they were being observed; they were ignoring the camera completely as they spoke to one another. Hermione was right that Sirius looked much better, dressed in new robes and eating what looked like steak.

Harry's stomach rumbled.

Sirius had time to go shopping and have lunch with his old friend.

He hadn't had time to come and see Harry, even if Harry hadn't exactly asked him to come.  


* * *

  
Long hours later, breakfast was, as usual, a grapefruit quarter. Dudley and Uncle Vernon were surly. Aunt Petunia was fretful. Harry was wondering whether he would be able to catch the Knight Bus again without being noticed.

The doorbell rang. Uncle Vernon heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon's grapefruit.

Harry heard Uncle Vernon's curt greeting and then he heard something that made him leap to his feet. Professor Lupin was answering Uncle Vernon in flawlessly polite tones.

Harry rushed into the living room, suddenly not caring whether Dudley stole his grapefruit, too. And there, waiting for him as promised, was his godfather.

"Hello, Harry," said Sirius. "We were just explaining to your Uncle that you were coming to stay with us for the rest of the summer— except for when you join your friends at the Quidditch World Cup, of course."

"Keep him forever," rumbled Uncle Vernon. "I don't care."

Sirius opened his mouth, and for a fleeting second Harry thought he would say that yes, he would keep Harry forever, thank you, and that was that.

Instead, Lupin caught Sirius' eye, and Sirius went silent as Lupin promised that Uncle Vernon would see Harry next summer.

So they were offering Harry a visit, not a home. Lupin had somehow convinced Sirius not to take Harry on, and Harry had been so sure during the last school year that Lupin had really liked him…

But going with them was still better than the alternative.

"Sirius, why don't you go upstairs with Harry and help him pack?" Lupin suggested pleasantly.

Sirius nodded and bounded up the stairs after Harry. Harry's heart pounded in his chest as it had that morning when he'd dreamed of the dementors.

"I'm glad your trial— I'm glad you're free."

To his surprise, Sirius pulled him into a hug. "I wouldn't be free if it weren't for you," he said into Harry's hair. "Thank you for making that ridiculous statement."

"I didn't really make it," said Harry.

"Oh, I know Andromeda wrote it, but no one would have cared if she'd said it."

"Do you have a lot of cousins?" asked Harry awkwardly as he began to throw things into his trunk. Sirius smiled approvingly when Harry pulled his letters out from beneath the loose floorboard.

"Anna's the only one worth mentioning. Her and her daughter."

"Tonks," said Harry. He remembered well the young witch he'd seen standing guard over Pettigrew at Hogwarts.

"Right. Andromeda married a man named Ted Tonks, and their daughter goes by her surname because Anna went mental and gave her a first name that's terrible even by Black family standards."

"What's Tonks' real name?" asked Harry.

Sirius made a face. "Nymphadora."

Harry cringed as he threw the last of his books into the trunk and slammed it shut.

"I assure you, Anna is really quite reasonable most of the time. Send your owl on ahead to meet us; I imagine she'd rather fly than let us transport her." As Harry explained the plan to Hedwig, who hooted her agreement, Sirius reached for his wand and levitated the trunk out of the room.  
Harry followed Sirius downstairs to find all three Dursleys staring rather contemptuously at Lupin, who kept a pleasant smile fixed on his face.

"Ready, then?" Lupin asked Harry and Sirius.

"Yes, if you're quite through interrupting our breakfast?" added Uncle Vernon.

Harry found himself pleased all over again that Dudley had taken Uncle Vernon's grapefruit. He grinned at Remus and Sirius. "Can we go out for breakfast?" he asked them casually, keeping one eye on Dudley. "Bacon and sausage and eggs and tomatoes and fried bread and black pudding and potatoes?"

"Whatever you want," said Sirius, but Harry barely heard him. He was too busy watching a line of drool slide off Dudley's chin.

"And then later, burgers and fizzy drinks and cake and—"

"Has your family been feeding you?" Lupin asked sharply, interrupting Harry's recitation of Dudley's favorite, now forbidden, foods.

"Dudley's on a diet, and that means the rest of us are as well," said Harry.

"I'm not going to force Dudders to watch—" Aunt Petunia began, but Sirius ignored her.

"Go drink a glass of water, Harry. Side-along Apparition can upset your stomach the first time you do it, and it's actually easier if there's something inside to come up."

Harry reluctantly walked back into the kitchen and gulped down a glass of water. When he returned, the Dursleys were sullenly silent. Whatever Lupin and Sirius had said to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, it had encouraged them not to reply.

"I'll take the trunk, you take Harry," said Sirius to Lupin. He tossed a regretful look at Harry. "I've had the wand for one day, so I'll let Remus Apparate you. And if you do get sick, you'll blame him and not me."

"Give me your arm, Harry," said Lupin, and Harry pretended that Sirius' repeated warnings that this might make him ill had had no effect on him.

An instant later, everything went black; he was pressed very hard from all directions; he could not breathe, there were iron bands tightening around his chest; his eyeballs were being forced back into his head; his ear-drums were being pushed deeper into his skull.

When he was able to see again, he was in front of a cottage and surrounded by fields of green. Sirius was standing nearby, holding the trunk and grinning.

"So that's Apparition," said Harry, trying to sound as if it were all very normal.

"Congratulations," said Sirius. "Most people really do vomit the first time."

"Harry takes to a great many things naturally," said Lupin. Harry couldn't remember taking to anything in the wizarding world naturally, other than flying of course, but he decided not to argue.

Sirius clapped him on the shoulder. "Let's get you fed."

Harry had almost forgotten how hungry he was while he looked around with interest at Lupin's home. It was a bit shabby, though no more shabby than the Burrow where Ron's family lived. He wondered if that was the real reason Lupin had encouraged Sirius not to take Harry away from the Dursleys forever— if money was the problem. He wondered how he could explain to Lupin and Sirius that he hadn't squandered his parents' money (they must have known how much money he'd inherited?) and that he could pay his own way.

He wondered if all kind wizards were poor and all mean wizards were rich, like Draco Malfoy's family.

A moment later, a plate laden with food was placed in front of him, and he relished one last time the thought of how jealous Dudley must be. Then, as he ate, Lupin and Sirius told him all about everything that had happened since the end of the Hogwarts term.

"Why didn't you write us that you were starving?" asked Sirius.

"I thought you had enough problems," said Harry honestly. "And I was going to write my friends and ask them to send food when you came."

"I never have problems that are more important than you," said Sirius so firmly that Harry almost believed him. "No matter if it's Voldemort knocking on your door or your cousin's diet or Snivellus Snape giving you detention."

Harry very nearly choked on his last bite of sausage. "Snivellus?" he gasped, unable to keep from dissolving into gales of laughter.

Sirius looked very pleased with himself. "Gave him that nickname the first time I met him when we were eleven. He'd just told your father that Gryffindor was only for people with more brawn than brains. Snivelly hasn't changed much, from what I gather."

Harry couldn't stop laughing. In his mind, he replayed every time that Snape had been cruel to Ron or Hermione or poor hapless Neville for no reason.

He remembered his first class with Snape, when Snape had asked him questions he couldn't possibly have answered and then accused him of trying to get by on his fame.

The image of eleven-year-old Sirius calling eleven-year-old Snape _Snivellus_ was the funniest thing he had ever heard in his life.

He had the best godfather ever.

Harry couldn't remember the last time he had laughed so hard. He had to take off his glasses as tears rolled down his cheeks.

"I don't begrudge you the opportunity to laugh with your godfather," said Lupin when Harry had regained a modicum of his composure. "But Professor Snape is still your professor, and still deserving of your respect when you return to Hogwarts."

"Do you really like him?" asked Harry. He tried to take the words back as soon as he'd asked. _Don't ask questions! _his Uncle Vernon's voice roared in his mind. He'd been able to ask questions, sometimes, since going to Hogwarts, but he knew that Lupin wouldn't be impressed by this particular question.

"I neither like nor dislike Severus," said Lupin at last. "He made me the Wolfsbane Potion perfectly every month during the last year. He kept you and the rest of your classmates safe from me, and he spared me a great deal of pain."

"But you still dressed him in Neville's grandmother's clothes," said Harry.

" _What_?" roared Sirius. And so Harry told Sirius all about his first boggart lesson, and it was Sirius' turn to laugh uproariously. Still chuckling, Sirius rose from the table and returned a moment later with an elaborately decorated basin. "Show me," he ordered Lupin.

"Honestly, Sirius—"

"Show me," Sirius returned. "If you don't, I daresay Harry will."

"Harry is not allowed to do magic in the summer," said Lupin.

"He is in emergency situations. This is an emergency," said Sirius reasonably.

Harry had no idea what the basin was, or what Sirius wanted Lupin to do, but before he could even speculate Lupin had raised his wand to his temple and guided a silver strand of smoke into the basin.

"Have you seen a Pensieve before, Harry?" asked Sirius. "Come look."

Together with Sirius, Harry leaned over the basin, and instantly the strangest thing happened. He and Sirius were transported at once to the faculty lounge at Hogwarts. Around them were Harry's classmates, including Harry himself. It was the first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson of the previous school year.

"Sirius, can't they see us?" Harry asked nervously. Hermione had spent most of their last ride on the Hogwarts Express explaining the many ways that time travel could go wrong.

"No," said Sirius. "We're inside Remus' memory."

They watched Snape insult Neville. They watched Lupin tell Neville how to defeat a boggart. They laughed together as Professor Boggart Snape was forced into Neville's grandmother's clothes.

"Moony is a brilliant teacher. Brilliant," said Sirius happily.

"The best we've ever had," Harry agreed as they stepped away from the Pensieve and found themselves back in the cottage.

When he looked at Sirius, though, the laughter was dying from his godfather's face. "I hadn't even realized— I should have."

"Hadn't realized what?" asked Lupin as he casually returned the memory to his brain.

"We can use the Pensieve to show our memories of James and Lily to Harry. Assuming Harry would like that."

Harry nodded, his throat too tight to speak.

"Well then," said Sirius. "We'll start with the first time I met your father on the train…"

**_ To be continued… _ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Multiple quotes from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in between the letters at the beginning of this chapter. Harry's views on Apparition quoted from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.


	13. Harry and the Families

The first week that Harry spent with Sirius and Lupin was disconcertingly peaceful. In the mornings, he usually did his homework. Sirius apologized profusely for bringing Harry to spend part of his summer with a professor who wouldn't approve of Harry waiting until the day before the term started to finish his assignments. Harry laughed, but he didn't mind at all. At the Dursleys' house, he had had to pick locks to get to his schoolbooks and do his homework under cover of night. It was much nicer to work on an essay at a sunny table with two fully qualified wizards nearby to make suggestions every time he got stuck.   
  
In the afternoons, he went outside to fly. The cottage was isolated enough that he didn't need to worry about being seen by Muggles. Sometimes he flew for hours, testing how high and fast he could go when he wasn't worried about bludgers and looking for the Golden Snitch; other times, Sirius came out with him and tried to unseat him or threw things for Harry to catch. If they got tired of that, they went into Sirius' shed to work on the enchanted motorcycle that had once visited Harry's dreams. Sirius asked Harry about his adventures and his friends. Harry noticed that Sirius didn't tell Harry much about himself in return, but he supposed that the twelve years of imprisonment was rather a sore subject.  
  
The evenings were the most difficult but also the best of all, because that was when Sirius and Lupin brought out the Pensieve and showed Harry their memories of his parents. He watched his father play Quidditch; he watched his mother protect the younger students as a prefect. He watched his parents holding hands at James' seventeenth birthday party at the Three Broomsticks, where Sirius and James teased Madam Rosmerta just as she'd said they did. He attended their wedding and, for the first time, saw all of his grandparents. His Muggle grandparents were every bit as glowingly proud of their daughter as Aunt Petunia had complained that they were. His father's parents were much older than Harry had expected, and obviously doted on their only son.   
  
Finally, he saw his parents holding him, and reading to him, and playing with him, and feeding him, and singing to him.   
  
On that night he went to bed early. He was grateful to Lupin and Sirius, but he also didn't want to talk about what he had seen or how sad and angry he felt that they had memories and he did not.   
  
He was glad that Sirius and Lupin had insisted on giving him his own bedroom in the tiny cottage. He had objected at first— they had obviously not been sharing before he arrived— but they had been adamant that Harry was a teenager who needed privacy and that they had shared for seven years of their life anyway. Sirius even went so far as to claim that he slept better when he could hear Lupin's snoring.   
  
Harry flung himself onto the bed. His heart raced as it had back on Privet Drive when he'd dreamed about the dementors. His face was flaming hot and his eyes filled with tears.   
  
It wasn't fair.   
  
His parents had wanted him.  
  
His parents' parents had stayed with them until their wedding.   
  
Voldemort had taken James and Lily away.  
  
He had long known this, of course. There had never been a time when he had been unaware that Dudley had parents and Harry did not. That Dudley was loved and Harry was not. That Dudley was wanted and Harry was not. He'd gone to Hogwarts, and met Ron and Hermione, who were far nicer than Dudley and always happy to share whatever they had. Still, Ron and Hermione, too, had loving parents and Harry did not.  
  
But Harry had had that, once.   
  
Now all he had was a scar, a madman who periodically tried to rise from the dead to kill him, and a vault of money. No one loved him like a parent, like a family.   
  
He didn't even have memories. Lupin and Sirius had memories, but Sirius hadn't cared enough about Harry not to lose his temper and get thrown in prison, and Lupin hadn't even tried to meet Harry for the first eleven years after Lily and James' death. Now they wanted him to go back to the Dursleys' house next summer.  
Lily and James wouldn't have let him stay with the Dursleys. He was sure of it.   
  
He replayed every moment he'd seen, committing the second-hand memories to his own mind.   
  
The way James had supported Harry's tiny head with one hand. If Harry tried hard enough, he could imagine his father's touch now. He hadn't imagined his father's touch since he'd been four years old.   
  
The way Lily had tucked Harry into her lap and done silly voices as she'd read him the tale of Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump.  
  
The way both Lily and James had laughed as they'd danced, passing Harry between them in time with the music.   
  
The way James had spooned food into Harry's mouth, exchanging a bantering commentary with Sirius as if it were a Quidditch match.   
  
The way Lily had demanded the Lupin teach her a Welsh lullaby that Lupin's own mother— apparently, she'd been Welsh— had sung to him.   
  
In the early hours of the morning, Harry fell into a restless sleep. His mother's screams from the night she had died blended together with the lullaby.  
  
_ Huna blentyn ar fy mynwes,   
Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon;   
Breichiau mam sy'n dynn amdanat,   
Cariad mam sy dan fy mron;   
Ni chaiff dim amharu'th gyntun,   
Ni wna undyn â thi gam;   
Huna'n dawel, annwyl blentyn,   
Huna'n fwyn ar fron dy fam.   
_   
_ Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!   
_   
_ Huna'n dawel, heno, huna,   
Huna'n fwyn, y tlws ei lun;   
Pam yr wyt yn awr yn gwenu,   
Gwenu'n dirion yn dy hun?   
Ai angylion fry sy'n gwenu,   
Arnat ti yn gwenu'n llon,   
Tithau'n gwenu'n ôl dan huno,   
Huno'n dawel ar fy mron?   
_   
_ Not Harry, please no, take me and kill me instead!   
_   
_ Paid ag ofni, dim ond deilen   
Gura, gura ar y ddôr;   
Paid ag ofni, ton fach unig   
Sua, sua ar lan y môr;   
Huna blentyn, nid oes yma   
Ddim i roddi iti fraw;   
Gwena'n dawel yn fy mynwes.   
Ar yr engyl gwynion draw.   
_   
_ Not Harry! Please. Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy… _   
  
Harry woke up to mid-morning sun streaming through the window, feeling no more rested than he had the night before. His body stiffened a moment before he knew why.   
  
In the next room, Sirius and Lupin were arguing in low, earnest voices. He opened the door a crack so he could hear them better.   
  
"Absolutely not, Remus!" Sirius snapped with the exasperated air of a man used to getting his way. "You'll get yourself killed."   
  
"I survived for twelve years while you were in Azkaban, and I'm not saying you can't come back tomorrow—"   
  
"You were used to it then. Because you didn't bother to tell me how hard Wolfsbane Potion is to get, this is going to be your first time without any in almost a year. You have no idea how that will affect the wolf."   
  
"Exactly. That's why Harry cannot be here under any circumstances. It's too dangerous."  
  
"I would keep him safe. I can keep both of you safe. I did not break out of Azkaban to let you go through this on your own, and I did not break out of Azkaban to send Harry away. We're both staying."   
  
"You saw how overwhelming those memories were for him last night! He needs a change of scenery. He needs one-on-one time with his godfather. He doesn't need to be put in danger."  
  
"He doesn't need to know his favorite professor is bleeding to death while he shops for brooms in Diagon Alley!"   
  
It felt remarkably like being back on Privet Drive, when the Dursleys had argued about what to do with Harry when they didn't want to chance him having fun at home alone but they also didn't want to chance him having fun if they took him to the zoo with Dudley. Mrs. Figg hadn't been an option, and Aunt Marge had hated Harry too much to look after him for a few hours…  
  
But Harry was old enough to look after himself now, even if Lupin and Sirius didn't seem to realize it.   
  
He pushed the door open the rest of the way entered the room. "I spent a week in Diagon Alley by myself last summer," he told them. "I don't need anyone to go with me. Sirius can stay here for the full moon."   
  
Both Lupin and Sirius looked oddly abashed at being caught. "I don't like the idea of you being alone, Harry," said Lupin quietly. "It's not that I don't think you're responsible enough, and I realize you've been on your own before, but you're just getting to know your godfather and those memories you saw last night—"   
  
"I always knew that I had parents and that they died," said Harry coolly.   
  
Sirius and Lupin glanced at each other with a concern that Harry found annoying.   
  
"All right," said Lupin at last. "The full moon is tonight, Harry. Knowing what you know from your studies about how incredibly dangerous werewolves are, would you like to stay here?"   
  
"I could help," said Harry. Lupin was the man who had taught his mother a lullaby to sing to him. In some alternate universe, Lupin was his family. Maybe, just maybe, Lupin would realize that Harry would be good at being part of a family and Sirius should formally assert himself as Harry's legal guardian. "I could… make breakfast tomorrow morning. And if you got hurt I could go for help."   
  
"I don't doubt that you would do those things. That wouldn't be the hard part. The hard part would be staying out of the way if I hurt Sirius. Or if I hurt myself. Or if— there's such a thing as a werewolf hunter, Harry. Are you really going to tell me that you could stay here and watch if someone came after us with silver bullets and killing curses?"   
  
"I could," Harry lied. It wasn't a lie he felt bad about because it was a stupid question to begin with.  
  
"When you believed that Sirius had murdered your parents and escaped Azkaban to murder you, you still decided to sneak into Hogsmeade and away from the protections of the castle," Lupin pointed out. "When you saw Sirius pull your friend Ron into the Whomping Willow, you didn't run for a teacher. You followed him."   
  
"Sirius wasn't really dangerous," said Harry.   
  
"You didn't know that at the time. You have an alarming tendency to do exactly as you please in devastatingly unpredictable situations, and you were obviously very upset by what you saw in the Pensieve last night. That's why I want your godfather to take you away for the night and stay with you."   
  
"I want to stay here," said Harry stubbornly. "Snape isn't here to make you Wolfsbane Potion. You need Sirius more than I do."  
  
"He's old enough to make an informed decision about this, Moony," said Sirius. He glanced at Harry. "And for what it's worth, there's essentially no chance of anything going wrong. Certainly no werewolf hunters out here in the middle of nowhere. I can control Remus so he won't want to hurt himself. As long as the wolf doesn't get the idea that there's a human in the house— and we can lock you in here so he won't— nothing can go wrong."   
  
"Famous last words," muttered Lupin. He looked again at Harry. "Very well. If you both believe that Harry should stay, I will agree on one condition."   
  
"This should be good," said Sirius to Harry, and Harry warmed at the feeling of having someone on his side, at least for the moment.   
  
"I want another wizard I trust to wait inside the house with Harry."  
  
"Who?" asked Sirius. "Who even knows other than the Hogwarts staff?"   
  
"My father."  
  
Sirius looked almost as surprised as Harry, and Harry was very surprised. He'd known that Lupin was younger than most of the professors, but he had never thought of Lupin as having parents he could call and visit. Professors didn't have parents.  
  
Harry was only thirteen, and he didn't have parents.   
  
"Where does your dad live?" asked Sirius.  
  
"Close enough to Apparate," said Lupin with a graceless shrug. "I'll go speak to him. Though I warn you that if he decides I've taken leave of my senses with this plan, he may just lock me in a cage until tomorrow morning."   
  
"He would lock his own son in a cage?" asked Harry before he could stop himself.   
  
"Harry," said Lupin sadly, "when I was growing up, he _had_ to."

* * *

  
Harry and Sirius spent most of the day working in virtual silence on Sirius' motorcycle. They had just put it away when the unmistakable pop of Apparition split the air outside.  
  
Standing beside Lupin was another man— similar to Lupin in bearing and stature, but without the feeling of warmth and mischief Harry had come to associate with his professor.   
  
Lyall Lupin introduced himself to Harry and thanked Harry for his role in stopping the most powerful dark wizard in a century (Harry was used to that). He shook Sirius' hand and expressed his regrets that Sirius had been sent to Azkaban for a crime Sirius hadn't committed (Harry could tell that Sirius wasn't used to that at all).  
  
"As I told Remus, I'm more than a little surprised that he's willing to do something so risky."   
  
"It's not risky," Sirius objected. "We've done it many times before."   
  
"I was more than a little surprised by that, as well," Lyall told Sirius. "That was a tremendous undertaking."   
  
"Remus was our friend," said Sirius. "And it was the best time in all of our lives."   
  
Harry never liked to hear that the best time in his parents' friends' lives, and perhaps his parents' lives, too, had been before he was born. He didn't have time to dwell on it, though; the adults were fast making plans and before Harry knew it he was being directed to lock himself in the basement. That reminded him of Privet Drive all over again, but at least this time he was the one who controlled the locks. It was different, too, that he had his wand in his pocket.  
  
Not long after he heard a howl and a rush of barking, he heard the elder Lupin's voice call out to him. "Harry, come see."   
  
He obeyed eagerly. He wanted to see the great dog and the wolf tumbling about and playing. He could see the danger and power, but there was also a beauty to the wolf, and he found himself saying so aloud.   
  
"I agree," said Lyall hoarsely. "This is the first time I've ever gotten a good look at my son in this form."   
  
"You couldn't see him when you locked him in a cage?" asked Harry, who couldn't help feeling suspicious of people who locked children in cages.  
  
"If I was close enough to see him, he'd work himself into a frenzy trying to get to me. He'd hurt himself even more. If I could have taken the curse for him, of course I would have— a thousand times over. But I couldn't, and if he'd killed me he would have been without a father in addition to everything else."   
  
Harry nodded. He'd known that all that was true.  
  
His insides still rebelled against the idea of locking a child in a cage for his own protection.

* * *

  
The next morning, Lupin looked paler and more tired than Harry had ever seen him before. Sirius looked tired, too, but he was beaming. "Get ready to go to Diagon Alley," Sirius told Harry. "We'll get your new school things. If Remus manages to stay awake for more than five minutes, he can catch up with his father."   
  
"I don't have the list," said Harry.  
  
"The resident professor does." Sirius brandished a square of parchment at Harry. "Dress robes this year, so we'll want to get your shopping done early in case we have to have them custom-made so they won't be hideous."  
  
"What are dress robes?"   
  
"For formal occasions."   
  
"What formal occasion—"  
  
"I can honestly tell you I don't know, and we won't get it out of Remus while he's unconscious."   
  
In no time, they were on their way to Diagon Alley. Harry wasn't at all interested in getting dress robes, thinking he would rather skip a formal occasion if it was much like one of the Dursleys' dinner parties. He was only slightly more interested in his new books. He was, at least, eager to renew his acquaintance with Florean Fortescue and see what new flavors of ice cream he had created in the last year, and Sirius had already hinted that Harry could expect anything he liked from Quality Quidditch Supplies for his birthday later that month.   
  
"We'll get the clothes out of the way first," said Sirius. To Harry's surprise, he pointed not at Madam Malkin's shop, but at a shop that sold Muggle clothing. "You look ridiculous in your cousin's hand-me-downs."   
  
Harry scowled. It wasn't as if he _liked_ having to roll up the legs of his jeans half a dozen times. It wasn't _his_ fault that the Dursleys had never bought him clothes that fit.   
  
"Don't tell me you're going to fight me on this," said Sirius. "I already fought Remus, and I won, and he's had much more practice at being a stubborn arse than you have."   
  
Harry _had_ noticed that while Lupin's home was careworn, his clothes were no longer the shabby ones he had worn during Harry's third year at Hogwarts. "Lupin lets you buy stuff for him?"   
  
"Not without an argument." Sirius steered Harry into the store.   
  
"How did you win?" Harry asked Sirius eagerly.   
  
"Why does that matter?"   
  
"I have money and Ron doesn't, and he goes spare any time I try to give him anything." If Sirius could tell him how to get Ron to let Harry help Ron out more often… Harry smiled at the thought of the fun they would have at the Quidditch World Cup if they could buy anything they liked without worrying about what galleons came out of what vault.   
  
"Oh." Sirius shook his head. "I blackmailed Remus. I don't recommend that you try that on Ron while you're both so young."  
  
"You blackmailed—"   
  
"Emotional blackmail, mostly, he didn't believe I'd follow through when I tried the other kind." Sirius cuffed Harry's head affectionately. "But we'll go to Quidditch Supplies and pick something out to bring the Weasleys as a thank you for taking you to the World Cup. And I'll buy Ron a new pet since I'm the reason he no longer has a rat. It'll go down easier coming from me instead of you. Is that all right?"  
  
It was better than all right, and Harry almost skipped for joy as they headed to Madam Malkin's shop. Madam Malkin smiled when she saw them. "First dress robes, dear?" she asked Harry. Harry nodded.   
  
"None of those high-necked old pureblood styles," said Sirius more sharply than Harry thought was strictly necessary.  
  
"I have just the thing," said Madam Malkin. She gestured that Harry should climb onto one of the footstools for fitting and floated an emerald green set of robes over his head. "Completely modern style, but a good fabric and a unique color. Brings out his eyes, you see."   
  
"Do you want your eyes brought out, Harry?" Sirius asked. Harry wondered why the way he dressed, and whether he liked it, was of such concern to Sirius but he knew better than to ask.  
  
"They're fine," said Harry. He had expected much worse— something with frills and lace, perhaps, like Gilderoy Lockhart might have worn.  
  
The shop door swung open just then, and Harry's heart sank as he saw that it was Draco Malfoy, accompanied by a blonde woman who could only be his mother.   
  
Harry and Malfoy, who had loathed each other almost from their first meeting in this very shop, locked eyes. So too did Sirius and Draco's mother.  
  
"I told you they let all sorts in here, Mother," said Draco.   
  
"Indeed." She still had not taken her eyes off of Sirius. The two of them appeared to be in some sort of staring contest.   
  
Harry glanced between them and Draco, wondering if Draco knew what this was about. Draco, who was mean but not entirely stupid, caught Harry's questioning gaze and smirked. He always enjoyed knowing things that Harry did not.   
  
"Pleased to see you out of prison, Cousin Sirius," Draco drawled.   
  
" _Cousin_?!" Harry blurted out before he could stop himself. "You're related to Malfoy?" he asked Sirius.   
  
Malfoy laughed. "Your godfather didn't tell you about how he used to be the right sort of wizard before he fell from grace?"   
  
"I didn't tell him because it wasn't worth mentioning," Sirius said. His hand gripped Harry's shoulder so tightly that it was painful. He turned to Madam Malkin.    
  
"Send the robes to us, please, and bill my account."  
  
Harry struggled to untangle himself from the green dress robes, convinced that something horrible might happen the second he pulled them over his head and was unable to see.   
  
His mind buzzed with the outlandish revelation. Sirius, his godfather, who ran Quidditch drills with him and wanted to buy a new owl for Ron, was related to _Malfoy_? _Malfoy_ , who made Dudley look like a kind, sensitive boy? _Malfoy_ , who had pretended to be a dementor in the hopes of making Harry fall off of his broom?

And Sirius hadn't told him. Sirius had let him find out from Malfoy, and Sirius had lied about it not being worth mentioning because it obviously mattered quite a bit to everyone in the room.  
  
He wondered, briefly, whether that was why Sirius had decided that he didn't want to take Harry away from the Dursleys permanently after all. Perhaps Sirius had learned that Harry and Malfoy were sworn enemies and he had decided that he couldn't take custody of someone who hated his own blood.   
  
No, that couldn't be it… Sirius' white-knuckled grip on Harry's shoulder told him that that couldn't be it…   
  
Harry jumped off of the footstool and handed the robes to Madam Malkin's assistant.   
  
Sirius addressed Draco once more as they left. "Your Aunt Bellatrix sends her love," he said. "At least, I think that was what she meant by all that screaming before she stopped talking a few years ago."

* * *

  
They still went to Quality Quidditch Supplies and the Owl Emporium as promised. They bought a dozen pairs of Ominoculars emblazoned with the Quidditch World Cup logo. Next, Harry chose a black and gold spectacled owl for Ron, thinking that it looked much the smartest and strongest of the owls on offer. They collected Harry's books for the new school year, too, with Sirius broodily paging through the new transfiguration textbook rather than saying much of anything to Harry.   
  
It wasn't until they were sharing Florean Fortescue's latest creation— sixteen scoops of ice cream topped with pretzels, pecans, peanuts, brownie crumbs, raspberry and cherry syrups, rainbow sprinkles, whipped cream, and cherries— that Sirius sighed and really looked at Harry for the first time since they'd left Madam Malkin's shop.   
  
"Draco Malfoy's mother is my first cousin, Narcissa. I haven't spoken to her since long before you were born. I was… not prepared to see her today."   
  
"I don't like my cousin very much either," said Harry, thinking how nice it would be not to speak to Dudley for fifteen or twenty years.  
Sirius made an effort to laugh, but he didn't quite succeed. "My family was one of the most prominent pureblood families in all of Britain for hundreds of years. My cousin Andromeda was disowned for marrying a Muggle-born, but her sisters Narcissa and Bellatrix made respectable pureblood marriages and were the pride of the family after I was disowned and my brother died."   
  
"Why were you disowned?"   
  
"I ran away. I don't think they got around to formally disowning me because I have access to the family money and the family home and the house-elf still has to obey me. But for all intents and purposes… well, I was always a disappointment, starting from the time I let myself be Sorted into Gryffindor and not Slytherin. Even Andromeda didn't do that. They let my friendship with your dad slide for a while because he was a pureblood even if he was a blood traitor, but they used to call Remus 'Lyall Lupin's invalid half-blood son.' I got tired of it— the bigotry, the hypocrisy, the high-necked dress robes…"   
  
It was Harry's turn to pretend to laugh.   
  
"I went to your dad's place," Sirius continued. "Your grandparents treated me almost like a second son. I loved your dad like a brother, and I always thought of my friends as my real family."   
  
Harry nodded. He understood that feeling.   
  
He understood less than ever why Sirius was so adamant that Harry would need to return to the Dursleys next summer.  
  
_** To be continued. ** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer/Note: The lullaby Suo Gân, by an anonymous composer, was first recorded in print around 1800 and the lyrics were captured by the Welsh folklorist Robert Bryan. There are various English translations; here is one:
> 
> Hush, my dear one,  
> Sleep serenely,  
> Now, my lovely  
> Slumber deep.  
> Mother rocks you,  
> Humming lowly,  
> Close your eyes now  
> Go to sleep.  
> Angels hover,  
> Ever nearer,  
> Looking on your  
> Smiling face.  
> I will hold you,  
> Close enfold you  
> Close your eyes now  
> Go to sleep.  
> Lovely darling,  
> I will guard you  
> Keep you from all  
> Woe and harm.  
> Slowly, gently,  
> I will rock you,  
> Resting sweetly,  
> On my arm.  
> May you slumber,  
> E'er so softly,  
> Dream of visions  
> Wondrous fair.  
> I will hold you,  
> Close enfold you.  
> Close your eyes now  
> Go to sleep.  
> May you slumber,  
> E'er so softly,  
> Dream of visions  
> Wondrous fair.  
> I will hold you,  
> Close enfold you.  
> Close your eyes now,  
> Go to sleep.


	14. The End of Summer

Remus awoke to blinding pain and raging thirst.   
  
He also awoke to the disconcerting sensation of not knowing quite where he was even though he knew he was in his own home.   
  
He opened his eyes.   
  
His father was seated in a chair in the corner of the room, reading what looked like Remus' lesson plans for the upcoming school year.  
  
That was the oddness he had felt, then. Not out of place, but out of time. It had been at least twenty years since he'd woken up after a full moon to see his parents sitting vigil by his sickbed.   
  
Something about the tiny movement caught Lyall's attention— a man who had spent his storied career detecting the undetectable could hardly be expected to miss his own son's fluttering eyelashes— and he rushed to hand Remus two vials of potion and a mug of chicken broth.   
  
"How are you feeling?" he asked.   
  
"Better," said Remus, and it was true. The potions worked almost instantly.   
  
"I don't believe there's a scratch on you." Lyall leaned against the edge of the bed as if Remus were a small child again. "Your friend Sirius knew what he was doing."   
  
"I hope you didn't tell him that," said Remus wryly in between sips of broth. "He'll be insufferable."   
  
"I did tell him, because he deserved to be told."   
  
In truth, Remus couldn't argue with that.  
  
"I— I ought to apologize to him. I won't, of course," Lyall continued. "It would be one of those apologies that would make him feel worse if he cared at all. But I do admit that I was terribly wrong about him from the time that he was a child."  
  
"Really?" Remus hadn't expected that. He didn't recall Lyall ever having said much about Sirius, or any of his friends for that matter.  
  
"When you first wrote home that Sirius Black was one of your roommates, I had half a mind to pull you out of school. I couldn't have imagined a worse choice than one of those Blacks— not just one of them, but the designated heir of the family. Your mum thought I was being ridiculous, of course. She never quite grasped what the Blacks represented. She just thought I was judging the boy for the crime of being posh. She always thought he was charming."   
  
"Everyone's mum thought Sirius was charming." Everyone's mother except Sirius' own, that was.   
  
"His will to survive— I've never seen its equal," Lyall mused. "Except, I suppose, in you. Four-year-olds don't come through werewolf transformations, but you did. No one keeps his wits after a decade with the dementors, but he did. No wonder you've always been so drawn to each other."   
  
Remus filed that observation away for future contemplation. There were more important things to discuss at the moment. "Dad, have you ever heard of any effective treatment for prolonged exposure to dementors? I don't mean chocolate and patronus charms in the moment. I mean—"   
  
"You mean, what should be done for Sirius?"   
  
"Yes."  
  
"Have you noticed any symptoms that concern you? He seems lucid to me, though I never knew him well. Does he seem off to you?"   
  
"No," Remus admitted.   
  
"Start with the basics, then. Is he eating? Sleeping?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"That's at least half the battle."   
  
Remus remembered the first nights after Sirius' trial when he'd cast silencing charms. Worse, he remembered a reality in which Sirius had become progressively more surly and withdrawn, isolated in his childhood bedroom, drinking to make the pain go away. "He survived for Harry. Right now he has Harry and that distracts him from anything that may have affected his mind in Azkaban. But in September, Harry will be back at Hogwarts."   
  
"As will you."  
  
"As will I."  
  
"I won't ask how you managed that."   
  
"You needn't ask, because I don't know." In truth, he didn't. Time travel alone shouldn't have broken Voldemort's curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position.  
  
"You don't wonder?" asked Lyall, ever the researcher.   
  
"I have more pressing concerns."   
  
"I think you're correct that isolation would be the worst thing for Sirius. Is money an object?"   
  
"For Sirius? Never."   
  
"Suggest that he find a cottage in Hogsmeade. It will keep him closer to Harry and to you, and it will almost demand contact with others as well."   
  
Remus nodded. He'd already come to a similar conclusion and was glad to have his theories confirmed.  
  
Lyall looked deep in thought. "How much Occulmency does Sirius know?"   
  
"Very little." They'd discussed the matter back before Sirius had died, back when Snape had refused to teach and Harry had refused to learn. Remus had been too naive to see, right then and there, that Snape was a spy who would eventually murder Albus Dumbledore. "His family prided itself on teaching Occlumency, but Sirius prided himself on ignoring anything his family wanted."   
  
Lyall smiled. "Perhaps he would make an exception now that his family isn't around."  
  
"You think it would be useful?"   
  
"All skills are useful." Remus smiled, too; he had often heard Lyall say as much. "A dementor attacks through its victim's memories. What better way to combat the effects than to control the movement of those same memories?"   
  
"I'll try to convince him."  
  
"For a fine teacher like you, it shouldn't be much of a challenge."  
  
If anyone else had said it, Remus might have rolled his eyes. But Lyall Lupin never praised where he did not absolutely believe that praise was warranted. "What did you think of the lesson plans?"   
  
"Excellent, particularly the work on unforgivable curses for the older students. And the lessons on dark creatures for the third years, but I would expect no less." Lyall's smile fell from his face. "You don't use notes when you talk about werewolves."   
  
"I lecture straight from the book," he agreed. Or at least, that was what he intended to do if Snape refrained from hijacking that portion of the curriculum. "It's the least suspicious thing to do."   
  
"Do you think the students are suspicious? Beyond the student who obviously knows already."   
  
"Harry's two best friends know as well. Hermione Granger worked it out on her own, and I can't imagine that she'll be the only one." He shrugged tiredly. "I can't do anything about that."  
  
Lyall looked even sadder, and Remus felt a familiar rush of guilt. Even as a small boy, he had been fully aware of how his condition had changed his parents' lives forever. Somewhere deep inside, he had been convinced that life was fair and that if this had happened to him and not to some other little boy, it must have been his fault. He should have noticed Greyback sooner. He should have yelled more quickly. He should have run faster.   
  
By the time Remus had learned that Greyback had targeted him because of Lyall's views on werewolves— _soulless, evil, deserving nothing but death_ — he'd been too used to the guilt to let it go. He wasn't especially angry at Lyall; he knew his father had changed his mind. He hadn't needed Sirius to make that point for him:  
  
_ "Your father was the world expert on hating werewolves, but the minute his son was bitten everything changed for him. He didn't dump you in a werewolf pack like Fenrir Greyback expected. He didn't leave you with your mother while he went out and found himself a new life. He went to every healer he could find. He uprooted his life over and over so you would always be safe. He traveled all around the world looking for a cure. He taught you everything he could so you'd be able to take care of yourself. You told me once that when Dumbledore came to tell you that he wanted you to come to Hogwarts, your father tried to fight him because he thought Dumbledore was there to hurt you. And your mother was right there with him even though she didn't have any magic and no one would have blamed her for saying she didn't sign up for raising a werewolf child. They both thought the sun rose and set on you." _   
  
It was why, as soon as he had been old enough, he had refused all help from his father. With Remus a legal adult, Lyall's life had finally had some modicum of peace. Remus had had no desire to ruin it.   
  
He'd always thought he was being rather noble.   
  
Then Teddy had come along.  
  
_Metamorphmagi are nothing but trouble,_ Dora had joked. Remus had smiled back at her, utterly besotted with his wife and son.   
  
But he had also imagined living in a world where metamorphmagus abilities were considered a curse. He had imagined Teddy avoiding him in order to spare him.   
  
It had broken his heart.  
  
_"And when this war is over, I do want to meet your father for more than five minutes,"_ Dora had warned.   
  
He'd promised.   
  
He'd meant it.   
  
He bit back the urge to tell his father everything— how scared he was that his decisions had destroyed Teddy, and Harry, too.   
  
But there was one thing he could say.  
  
"Dad?"   
  
"Yes?"   
  
"Can you come back next month?"   
  
Lyall smiled again. "Of course. And I'll reread some of my research on the longterm effects of dementors before I see you again."

* * *

  
Harry's birthday came at the end of the month with cake, treacle tart, James' detention communication mirror, and a set of practice golden snitches of dubious origin.  
  
The second full moon of the summer came soon after, this time with significantly less terror on Remus' part. Lyall arrived with a roll of parchment filled with obscure notes on dementors and an admonition to be very, very careful in choosing an Occlumency teacher for Sirius.   
  
When Remus was sufficiently recovered from the full moon, he accompanied Sirius and Harry to Hogsmeade, where they chose a cottage not far off the main road to serve as Sirius' winter residence. Neither Harry nor Sirius looked terribly thrilled with the prospect— Sirius because he was dreading saying goodbye to Harry, and Harry because… well, Remus didn't know precisely why Harry was upset. He did know that the time had come to make sure Sirius agreed to the next step in his plan to prevent the second reign of Voldemort. With a cool, bitter smile, Sirius voiced his consent.  
  
That same day, a letter from Ron (carried by his new owl, which had been named Cannon) officially invited Harry to the World Cup and asked whether he could Floo over to pick Harry up.   
  
At Sirius' direction, Harry wrote back that Ron and he and his family were welcome to stay for lunch when they came to get collect. Remus requested a cheeky addition that the twins would be especially welcome because they hadn't finished serving all of the dententions they had earned the previous year. Harry laughed and finished the letter as directed without seeming to think much of it.

* * *

  
They arrived at the appointed time: Ron tumbling out of the fireplace with a thousand things to tell Harry, the twins casting mischievous looks in every direction, and Arthur Weasley, a bit concerned that Remus hadn't been joking about the detention.   
  
Arthur probably would have been more concerned if he'd known the real reason that Remus wanted to see Fred and George. _But this time George keeps both of his ears, _Remus silently promised himself as the memory of George's limp, blood-drenched body slumping into his chest returned to the forefront of his consciousness.   
  
When Arthur had been called upon to use his expertise to examine Sirius' motorcycle and Ron and Harry had been ushered outside to experiment with the Omnioculars, Remus maneuvered the twins into the kitchen and deposited the Marauder's Map on the table in front of them.   
  
Fred and George looked at Remus with polite disinterest. He almost laughed aloud at how convincing they were.   
  
"I suppose it is less interesting when school isn't in session," Remus said before drawing his wand and bringing the map to life. The twins' eyes widened. "Mr. Filch seems to be working in the astronomy tower, and most of the ghosts are in the Great Hall. Perhaps they're planning some synchronized flying after the Sorting?"  
  
"It seems like quite a useful map," said Fred.   
  
"Thank you," said Remus. "We did work on this final version for the better part of two years. Never stopped refining it until Mr. Filch came into possession of it."  
  
Watching understanding flicker across the twins' faces was one of the more rewarding moments of his life. It probably shouldn't have been, but it was.   
  
The twins looked from Remus to the map to each other before bursting into gales of laughter.   
  
Sirius slid into the room before Fred and George had composed themselves.   
  
"I see they've taken the news well, Mr. Moony," said Sirius with practiced nonchalance. The twins craned their necks to gawk at him.   
  
"Well enough, Mr. Padfoot," Remus returned. "Is Arthur distracted?"   
  
"We may have to hire a raging occamy to chase him away from my motorcycle."   
  
"You can't have written this map and then become a professor," said Fred at last, brushing a tear of laughter off his cheek.   
  
"I tell him that all the time," said Sirius. "He seems to think that he could do both of those things."  
  
"Some of those oddly specific lines he gave us when we had detention make more sense now, though," said George to Fred. _" I will never again cast a glitter charm on Marcus Flint at 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon in the hallway outside the History of Magic classroom when the moon is waning."_   
  
"Lines, Moony?" asked Sirius with mock-disgust. "You couldn't come up with a more creative punishment than that?"  
  
"A glitter charm doesn't warrant a creative punishment. Besides, I enjoyed their company."   
  
"I don't think any other professor ever offered us tea while we were writing lines," said Fred.  
  
"It's a good thing that we actually bothered to get an OWL in his class," said George. "We can keep taking Defense this year."   
  
"I look forward to it," said Remus. "But I wanted to see you today to make you an offer. Or rather, Mr. Padfoot will make you an offer because he's not your professor. Past Marauder to present Marauder."  
  
Sirius cleared his throat. "I understand from my friend Moony that your ambitions are not particularly academic."   
  
The twins glanced at each other and remained silent, listening.   
  
"Moony tells me that what you two would like to do after you leave Hogwarts is open your own joke shop, which is why you did not, as you say, bother to get very many OWLs."  
  
"And what if that is what we want?" asked Fred suspiciously. There was, of course, no way that Remus could reasonably have known of their ambitions unless he had made a lucky guess.  
  
"I think it's a marvelous idea. I am very much in favor of more joke shops. I also happen to have come into an enormous and unexpected inheritance which would be very useful if I wanted to provide a startup loan to two entrepreneurs like yourselves."  
  
Fred and George leaned forward. "Keep talking," they said in unison.  
  
"I understand that you will be watching the Quidditch World Cup from the same box as Barty Crouch."   
  
"I hope not," said Fred. "Our brother Percy is even more insufferable than usual when he's around Mr. Crouch."   
  
"I was in Azkaban when Barty Crouch, Junior, was brought in. Prisoners in Azkaban aren't normally allowed visitors, but when you're as powerful as the Crouch family, exceptions are made. His mother made a great show of weeping and wailing, and soon after that, he died."   
  
"I remember that story," said George. "Crouch's wife died around the same time as her son. Percy thinks it makes Crouch all tragically perfect or something."   
  
"Or something," agreed Sirius darkly. "I have a theory, and in exchange for the startup loan I would like you to test it."   
  
"What's the theory?"   
  
"I believe that Mrs. Crouch was dying when she went to visit her son and traded places with him so he wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban. A few vials of polyjuice potion is all it would take, and dementors can't see anyway."   
  
"And how would we prove that?"   
  
"When the World Cup is about to start, see if Crouch's house-elf is guarding an empty seat. Find a way to determine whether Barty Crouch, Junior, is sitting in that seat covered by an invisibility cloak."  
  
"And do not put yourself in any danger in the process!" interrupted Remus. "There should be enough fully qualified wizards in the area to handle the situation should you… reveal anything unexpected."   
  
"We'll do it," said Fred.   
  
"But why us?" asked George. "Why not just ask Dad?"  
  
"It's a very serious allegation for your father to make against one of his colleagues," said Remus. "And he may feel that he would have to go through official channels, which would give Mr. Crouch an opportunity to hide his son."  
  
"Why not Harry?"   
  
"Because he just used his name to get the Minister of Magic to give his godfather a fair trial. I don't want him to push the Ministry any further. I'd rather things… looked like an accident, and he just happened to be there."   
  
"We can do that," said Fred. He held out his hand, and he and Sirius shook on it. George shook Sirius' hand, too, before gesturing at the map. "Who are Mr. Wormtail and Mr. Prongs?"   
  
"Mr. Prongs was Harry's dad," said Sirius roughly. "You became intimately familiar with Mr. Wormtail when he was posing as your brothers' pet for thirteen years."   
  
The twins exchanged a dark look. "We should have tested more of our spells on him," said Fred.   
  
"But we can tell you about the time we dropped him in the toilet and tried to flush him down to see if we could summon him back," offered George.   
  
Sirius seemed to appreciate the gesture, and the four of them went outside to join Arthur, Ron, and Harry.

* * *

  
It was a sunny day and they ate lunch outdoors.  
  
The twins demanded that Ron explain why he had not told them that he'd learned the identities of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs months before. Ron retorted that they had never shared the map with him, so he did not have to share with them. "You probably know secret passwords to open half the doors in the castle and you haven't told Harry and me," Ron pouted.   
  
At that, Harry turned sharply to look at Remus and Sirius. For an instant, Remus worried. He worried that Harry knew that they had set a mission for Fred and George without telling him. He worried that Harry knew why Sirius had suddenly become insistent that Harry return to his aunt and uncle next summer, and that Lily's protection would break with that knowledge. He worried that Harry had somehow uncovered the entire mess of time manipulation.   
  
Then Harry asked, "What does six-nine-seven-seven mean?   
  
Sirius beamed at the question. "Once upon a time, when we were very young and very foolish, we were in a place where we weren't supposed to be, doing something we weren't supposed to be doing."  
  
"It's surprising, I know," added Remus, and Harry's snort of laughter warmed his heart.  
  
"We had a reason to pick up a Muggle telephone, which neither your dad nor I had ever seen. Now, Remus claimed to know what he was doing, but he didn't really. So it took us a while to work out how to use it. We had to study it, and we saw that the dial with the numbers— there were letters matched up to the numbers."   
  
Harry nodded. This was not a revelation to him.   
  
"M for Moony, that was six. W for Wormtail, that was nine."   
  
"P for Padfoot and Prongs was seven," Harry completed.  
  
"After that, whenever we wanted to use a password or a code that any of us could guess, we used six-nine-seven-seven. It's the same order our names were in on the map, which was our crowning achievement. I knew that if Remus wanted me to be able to break into his office last year, he would use that as the password."   
  
Harry looked at them blankly.  
  
"Is something wrong with that?" asked Sirius.   
  
"I just… thought it would be something more complicated. Like, some kind of amazing magic."  
  
Sirius glanced at Arthur, who was listening to his sons' argument and paying the rest of them no mind. "I don't suggest that you try to tell Arthur Weasley that Muggle technology isn't amazing magic."   
  
"I guess," agreed Harry.   
  
"Any other questions, Harry?" asked Remus, hoping that the answer was no.   
  
Harry looked like he might take them up on the offer, but then Ron threw a sandwich at the side of his head and the moment passed.   
  
As they finished eating, Sirius cast an assortment of spells on the remaining food for Harry's amusement, but Remus could feel Sirius' mood growing darker and darker as the hour of Harry's departure approached. When Sirius cast a spell a bit too hard and blew up the final sandwich— to the raucous laughter of the four teenage boys present— Remus raised his own wand to clean up the mess.   
  
Sirius blocked his spell for no reason Remus could discern other than contrariness.   
  
Remus broke Sirius' spell for no reason other than vague annoyance that everything was always harder than it should have been.   
  
Remus stopped Sirius' wordless hex just in time, but he had to jump to his feet and take a proper dueling stance to do it.   
  
"Get him, Professor!" shouted Ron delightedly.   
  
"Get him, Sirius!" shouted Harry, apparently wanting to even things out.  
  
Sirius raised an eyebrow at Harry. "Shall I?"   
  
"Or perhaps Arthur doesn't want us dueling around his three underage sons," suggested Remus.  
  
"Or Dad could be the referee," proposed Ron excitedly. Apparently, he had decided that he would quite like to see a magical duel as his post-meal entertainment.    
  
"He might want to know whether our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor can out-duel the most famous escaped prisoner ever."   
  
"Yeah, Dad, we'd better find out whether Professor Lupin can really duel. Professor Lockhart couldn't," agreed George.  
  
"I think it's essential to our education," agreed Fred.   
  
Arthur's gaze wandered bemusedly over the four hopeful boys before he looked a question at Remus and Sirius. "I don't see what it could hurt if you aren't going to use illegal spells."   
  
"The duel is over the minute a spell goes astray," Remus said, more as a warning to Sirius than as an explanation to the boys.   
  
"I shan't miss, then," said Sirius. "Even though I've never dueled with this wand."   
  
"You'll have time enough to make excuses later," said Remus mildly.   
  
Sirius jumped to his feet with a grin on his face.   
  
Grinning, of course. Grinning like he'd grinned at Bellatrix Lestrange before he'd fallen through the veil.   
  
Not that Remus had an advantage. He'd died the last time he'd dueled, too.   
  
Suddenly he was glad that Ron and Harry had pushed for this. He was glad that he wouldn't have the time to worry about his first duel in this new world— even if that duel was in jest.   
  
Arthur used his wand to mark an oval in the grass. "No stepping outside this area," he decreed. Then he drew a smaller oval a short distance away. "Boys, no stepping outside that area."   
  
There was much moaning and groaning from Arthur's sons that he had put too much distance between them and the fight, but Arthur was not to be swayed. "Any spell that reaches the observers' area immediately ends the match in a loss for whoever cast the spell. Face your partner."  
  
Sirius and Remus retreated to opposite ends of the oval and bowed to one another without being told.   
  
"One… two… THREE!"  
  
Sirius lunged at Remus with a blasting curse, which Remus was able to parry quickly with a shield charm. He cast Aguamenti, hard, leaving Sirius soaking wet but still on his feet. One of the twins was jeering; Harry was calling words of encouragement to Sirius, who managed to hit Remus with a leg-locker curse that Remus wasn't able to break until he'd distracted Sirius with a flock of bats that soared determinedly toward him. Sirius reversed the bats' trajectory and turned them into rocks, only one of which hit Remus as he did a stupid-looking hop to get out of the way as the vestiges of the leg locker curse wore off.   
  
Sirius threw a jelly-fingers curse; Remus ducked and retaliated with a jelly-brain jinx.  
  
"Joke's on you," yelled Sirius. "That doesn't work on someone whose brain is already jelly."   
  
Remus took the opportunity to bind Sirius' tongue. Sirius was proficient enough in non-verbal magic that this did not end the duel, but it narrowed Sirius' choices considerably as they exchanged stinging hexes and tickling jinxes, suddenly playing rather than fighting.   
  
Sirius let loose a strong stunning spell the instant he regained his voice. It brushed by Remus' side; as he lost his balance he sent a trip jinx at Sirius so that Sirius fell, too.   
  
From the ground, Remus tried to disarm Sirius; Sirius threw up a shield charm, and in the back of his mind Remus hoped that Harry was taking note that Expeliarmus wasn't a failsafe solution to all magical altercations.   
  
Remus sent his Patronus to charge and distract Sirius, who tried one more stunning spell before Remus managed to sneak a body bind beneath his defenses.  
  
Sirius lay unmoving as Remus raised his wand and approached him, sweating and breathless.   
  
Arthur called the match in Remus' favor, and Remus quickly removed the bind from Sirius and pulled him to his feet. He hugged Sirius in lieu of bowing to him.   
  
"I will get you next time," Sirius whispered in his ear.  
  
Remus didn't doubt it.   
  
He even looked forward to it.  
  
For much of the duel, neither one of them had particularly been trying to win and they hadn't cast anything more violent than a stunning spell. But for all that, Sirius had been dueling properly. He hadn't been the reckless, flashy showoff of years past. He had been smart and responsible and had generally behaved like a man who cared more about whether he lived than how he looked.

* * *

  
The exercise had done Sirius good. It was without sulking or snapping that he pulled Harry aside to tell him goodbye and that they would see each other again soon.   
  
Meanwhile, Remus pretended not to notice when the twins stole the Marauder's Map from the kitchen after Remus announced that as their professor he would never return such a thing to them, or to Harry, either.  
  
He told the boys to enjoy the World Cup and that he would see them at school.   
  
As soon as Harry and the Weasleys had vanished into the flames, Sirius poured himself a glass of fire whiskey and downed it in one gulp.   
  
"Don't say anything, Remus," said Sirius, and Remus didn't.  
  
_** To be continued. ** _


	15. The World Cup

While the rest of wizarding Britain was mesmerized by the Quidditch World Cup, Remus and Sirius spent long days at Grimmauld Place reading about horcruxes (even more disgusting than Remus had realized) and rehashing everything Remus knew about the second reign of Voldemort (not nearly enough).   
  
"I'll need to practice controlling fiendfyre," Sirius decided. "I think I'll start by testing it on the family tree."   
  
There was a distinct sound of disgruntled muttering behind them. _"KREACHER, I FORBID YOU TO EAVESDROP, "_ Sirius bellowed.   
  
There was a crack behind them which may or may not have meant that Kreacher had vanished. Remus moved _Do Something About Kreacher _higher up his mental to-do list.   
  
The crack was quickly followed by another, more dignified tap. Remus looked up to see that snowy owl was rapping at the closed door.   
  
"Clever Hedwig," Sirius remarked, jumping to his feet to take the letter from the owl's leg. "You knew to find me here?"   
  
Hedwig looked rather disdainfully at Sirius as he dared to question her skill, but Sirius didn't notice, busy as he was unfolding Harry's letter. Remus gaped at the length of it; he was fairly certain that Harry regularly turned in shorter essays.   
  
Sirius gestured that Remus could read over his shoulder, and Remus hastened to do so.  
  
_ Dear Sirius,   
_   
_ The Quidditch World Cup was the BEST. I wish you could have been here. We took a Portkey to the stadium. I never used a Portkey before and I like Apparition better. I can't believe I have to wait until I'm seventeen to Apparate on my own. Ron's brother Percy just passed the test and Apparates everywhere just to prove he can. It's annoying but I think I might do the same thing. _   
  
_ The Omnioculars you bought were perfect. Since we already had them, we bought programs and dancing shamrock hats and rosettes.   
Our seats were in the top box. There were seats for about twenty people. When we got there the only person— well, being— there was a house-elf. She said her name was Winky.   
_   
_ Minister Fudge came in with the Bulgarian minister and introduced me. I said I was so happy to see Minister Fudge and I admired him so much. I wasn't sure if I was still supposed to do that now that you're free but I did just in case. I thought I might have done the wrong thing because it came out sounding sarcastic and Ron and Fred and George were all making faces behind him. But Minister Fudge seemed to think that I just think he's great, so I guess what I did was okay. _   
  
"Harry needs to learn what he should and shouldn't put in writing," Remus muttered.  
  
"Just wait," said Sirius, who was reading a page ahead of Remus.  
  
_ Fudge asked whether I was enjoying getting to know you and I said yes and I was so glad that he made sure I got the chance. By then it was only Ron making fun of me, which was weird because usually the twins are worse. Then Fudge said he hoped you understood it was all a big misunderstanding and weren't too angry. I started to ask whether he was crazy because obviously anyone would be angry about being tortured for twelve years for something he didn't do and there's nothing to misunderstand.   
_   
_ Luckily he didn't hear me because just then Fred and George showed Winky their trick wand that turns into a rubber chicken. They've started a business called Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and they've invented loads of stuff like the trick wands and something called ton-tongue toffee. You should probably warn Professor Lupin that the twins are planning to make him give them a "creative" detention because they want to know what that would be like.   
_   
_ Winky told Fred and George that house-elves don't touch wands and don't like jokes and it isn't their place. Fred and George apologized and they dropped the wand so that they couldn't pick it up without climbing over Winky. They got all tangled up with her and somehow they pulled an invisibility cloak off the empty seat next to her.   
_   
_ Except the seat wasn't empty. There was a man sitting there. He reached for Fred's wand, the real one, not one of the joke ones, but Fred was too fast. Mr. Weasley and Minister Fudge seemed to know exactly who he was. They said his name was Barty Crouch, Junior, and he was supposed to have died in Azkaban. They put a spell on him to bind him. They sent Percy to find his boss, Mr. Crouch. Percy went. Percy was so sure that it was a mistake and that Mr. Crouch could never have done anything wrong on purpose. He was swearing that Mr. Crouch would explain everything as soon as he got there.   
_   
_ Fudge kept saying over and over that he couldn't believe that this had happened twice, that two people had escaped from Azkaban. That Mr. Crouch, who was the one who made sure you didn't have a trial, broke out his own son. He said it reflected very poorly on the Ministry and he would have to separate himself from the old guard entirely.   
_   
_ When Mr. Crouch got there, he… I don't know how to explain it. They introduced him to me before we got to the stadium and he was the most uptight person I'd ever seen in my life. He looked just like a Muggle investment banker, even though most wizards look like idiots when they try to dress like Muggles. But when Percy brought him back, and he heard what Fudge was saying, and he looked at his son, he sort of crumbled.   
_   
_ He started crying and talking about his wife, how his wife had been the love of his life but their son had been the love of her life. How her dying wish was for him to save their son. How he'd kept Barty from hurting anyone, but how he knew his wife didn't want Barty to be a prisoner so he'd let him come to the World Cup.   
He said he'd bring Barty back to Azkaban himself. Crouch said that wouldn't be necessary and he called over some Aurors, I guess they were at the World Cup undercover, and they took both of the Crouches away.   
_   
_ Everyone kept asking Fred and George what happened and they kept saying it was an accident. Except I know Fred and George and they're really funny and break a lot of rules and it's pretty much never an accident. They stopped making fun of me when I was acting like a colossal git for the Minister of Magic to go and talk to a house-elf. It's like they knew something. _   
  
"I see what you mean," said Remus to Sirius. "You really need to talk to him about using those mirrors instead of writing, even if it means he has to wait to talk to you."   
  
"I can't say I'm sorry to hear this right away, though," said Sirius. "And I don't want to lie to him. We're already telling him too little. We should at least tell him about Lily's magic and why I can't assert guardianship."   
  
"And when that breaks the spell anyway because he knows he only has to check in once in a while and stops thinking of the Dursleys' house as home?"  
  
Sirius scowled. "I don't mind taking that risk."   
  
"If you don't mind, I can't stop you," said Remus, because giving Sirius something to rebel against was the surest way to make Sirius take action.   
  
Sirius resumed reading, and so did Remus.  
  
_ Then everyone stopped asking Fred and George things and the mascots came out.   
_   
_ Oh— all of the Malfoys were in our box by then. So I guess you can be glad you weren't here. Draco's mother looked like she wanted to throw herself out of the box every time someone said your name, and people kept saying your name. Well, mostly Ron and I kept saying your name and talking about how Hermione is the smartest in our year even though she's Muggle-born because it was fun watching the Malfoys look stupider and stupider. Lucius Malfoy said something to Ron's dad about how Ron's dad could have sold his house and it wouldn't have paid for Quidditch tickets. All the Malfoys are awful.   
_   
_ Anyway, the mascots came out. I didn't like the veela at all. I mean, I liked them at first but I don't like anything that makes me think things I don't really think. I stood up and Hermione had to pull me back into my seat, and you know she's not going to let me forget about it.   
_   
_ Then the leprechauns came out and they did a rainbow fireworks display with gold and everything.   
_   
_ Ireland's chasers are amazing, but Viktor Krum is even more amazing. I can't wait until Quidditch starts again at school. I'm going to do a Wronski Feint in every match.   
_   
_ We went back to the tent and I thought Fred and George and Percy were going to argue all night about Crouch. But then there was screaming outside and it turned out that some wizards took the Muggle family that runs the campsite and levitated them and did disgusting things with them. Mr. Weasley told us to hide in the woods and Draco Malfoy said horrible things about coming for Hermione because she's Muggle-born.   
_   
_ It was sick. I knew Voldemort's supporters were still out there but I guess I didn't expect them to be this public about everything. This was the best summer I ever had and I wish it hadn't ended like this.   
_   
_ —Harry _   
  
The next day, the _Daily Prophet _ran one story about Barty Crouch and another about the attack on the Muggles. Neither article was nearly as informative as Harry's letter, although both Sirius and Remus took a grim pleasure in how rapidly Cornelius Fudge distanced himself from Barty Crouch. The _Prophet_ even opined that perhaps it was time for the Ministry to consider an alternative to dementors.   
  
"I wonder if you have enough public sympathy to push that idea through," mused Remus.  
  
"If I have anything to do with getting rid of the dementors, it'll be because Fudge is afraid I'll sue the Ministry. That's what he was really asking Harry, whether Harry understood it or not."   
  
Remus shrugged. "You're the one descended from wizarding royalty. I suppose you'd be the one who'd know how to make it happen."   
  
Sirius favored Remus with a rude gesture. "You know I forgot what little of that I ever learned."  
  
Remus privately thought that Sirius had always been in full possession of his family's infamous ability to exert pressure just so, but he knew better than to voice that opinion aloud. Instead, he said that it would be nice to get the dementors out of the way in case they weren't able to stop Voldemort's rise entirely. "You saw what happened the first time," he said, gesturing to the Pensieve. "You and I were both killed by known Death Eaters who'd been locked up over and over, but who went free because the dementors switched sides."   
  
Sirius was silent.  
  
"Do you _want_ to sue the Ministry?" Remus asked.   
  
This time Sirius barked out a laugh. "It's tempting. If this were just about what I wanted…" He shook his head. "No. I want innocent people protected from those things more than I want revenge." He rose and stomped to the fireplace. Remus heard the fire flare to life, and then muffled voices.  
  
An instant later, he was face-to-face with Andromeda Tonks. He couldn't help staring at his sort-of-mother-in-law. Had she spoken with Dora today? Had Dora been with her when Sirius had unexpectedly Flooed?   
  
"Remus, you remember my cousin Andromeda Tonks. Anna, my friend Remus Lupin," Sirius said, a perfect formal introduction worthy of the Blacks.   
  
Andromeda greeted Remus politely. Remus returned the sentiment and tried to look like someone who a mother would want her daughter to marry.  
  
"What are you doing here, Sirius?" asked Andromeda, looking around the room with distaste.  
  
"Research," said Sirius. "Easier to stop Death Eaters when you know how they think."  
  
Andromeda looked at Sirius with something like pity. "The war's been over for thirteen years. I don't like what happened at the World Cup either—"   
  
"Your godson isn't target number one for those people."   
  
"No, my only daughter is a newly qualified Auror who was responsible for escorting Barty Crouch and his son to prison and has been working without a break ever since that fiasco."  
  
"And wouldn't you rather that she wasn't exposed to dementors when she's called upon to escort the scum of the earth to Azkaban?"   
  
Andromeda's eyes swept uncomfortably around the room once more. "I still don't know exactly what you want, Sirius, but I assure you that you have a better chance of getting it if we take this conversation to my house."   
  
"You see," said Sirius smarmily, "that kind of intelligent decision-making is why I came to you for help in the first place." He picked up the _Daily Prophet _and Harry's letter. "Let's go."   
  
Andromeda gave them each a pinch of Floo Powder and instructions on getting to her house.   
  
As if Remus needed those instructions.   
  
Andromeda's sparkling kitchen was a welcome contrast to the relentless grime of Grimmauld Place. Remus remembered the last time he'd stepped into that fire, knowing that he was almost certainly marching to his death.   
  
He remembered Teddy, eyes wide and unfocused, sitting at this very kitchen table in Dora's arms.   
  
Luckily, Andromeda was too busy making tea, and Sirius too busy flattering Andromeda, that neither one of them noticed if Remus was taking in the room with the desperate air of a man who would have done anything to get back to another time.  
  
No. No, he wouldn't, he reminded himself. He would bring Teddy into this world, a better world than the one he'd been born into in a past only Remus remembered. Teddy and Harry would both have happier childhoods.   
  
He let Sirius and Andromeda discuss the best way to use whatever leverage Sirius had against the Ministry without contributing much to the conversation. Their words washed over him as he remembered the softness of Teddy's hair and the piercing sound of his cries.   
  
It was hard to be in this place without his wife and child.  
  
"I'd like to watch you sue them, too," Andromeda admitted after she'd written a draft of a letter to the editor to be signed by Sirius. "But you don't need the money, and— well, anything that makes Nymphadora safer."   
  
"You don't approve of her career choice?"   
  
"I hate it," said Andromeda, and Remus didn't think he ever remembered her being so emphatic in the past. "Of course I was proud of her. All those OWLs, all those NEWTs, the training, the personality tests. But from the time she was old enough to understand that Bellatrix Lestrange was her aunt, and what Bella had done…" Andromeda shivered. "She took it on as a part of herself. You'd think that me being disowned and her father being a Muggle-born would be enough to keep her from feeling any responsibility for the Black family legacy, but it didn't. She was always laughing and joking and making friends, but she also always felt ashamed. She took her studies very seriously when she wouldn't take anything else seriously."   
  
"I hope I didn't make it worse," said Sirius. "Bella wasn't the only close relative she had in Azkaban."   
  
"I don't think you ever haunted her the way Bella did," mused Andromeda. "Even though she actually knew you. Or that may have been what made it easier. She knew that no matter what you'd done, you were still nothing but a man. Bella was—is— a specter. A legend. It's easier to fear the unknown."   
  
Sirius shrugged. "I know Bella pretty well, and I'm afraid of her. Anyone with sense would be."  
  
"Still? Azkaban hasn't… ruined her?"   
  
"What was there to ruin?" asked Sirius bitterly, and Remus knew that he was thinking of what he'd seen when he'd first purchased the Pensieve. "She started out as mad as can be, so how could the dementors make her even more so? She has no sense of guilt, she has very little to grieve. She has her husband with her, and that helps. She believes that Voldemort will return and reward her for her loyalty, and that helps, too."   
  
"Is she lucid?"   
  
"She stopped talking a couple of years ago, but I would never underestimate her." His lip curled. "Family trait. We don't break in there."   
  
"Please do not say that to the Minister if you end up discussing the ethics of dementors with him."  
  
"We won't be discussing ethics. He doesn't care about the ethics. He just cares about the optics."   
  
"It doesn't matter as long as we end up with a mutually satisfactory result."  
  
"You sound like your father."  
  
Andromeda glared. "I wasn't the one wandering around Grimmauld Place this morning."  
  
_"Who's been wandering around Grimmauld Place?" _The front door slammed shut.   
  
Remus' heart jumped into his throat. He hadn't heard her voice in a year, and he didn't have time to think about seeing her again before she bounded into the room.  
  
Her jeans were ripped, her leather jacket was purple, and her hair was blue.  
  
Her skin was tinged with gray and her eyes were shadowed with exhaustion.   
  
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he wasn't allowed to gather her into his arms and tell her so.   
  
"Hi, Mum," said Dora. "I'm only off for an hour. Do you have anything I can eat?" Andromeda got up and sent summoning charms to all corners of the kitchen, caressing Dora's shoulder affectionately as she passed by her. Dora turned her attention to Sirius. "What were you doing at Grimmauld Place? Why would you want to go there? Welcome back to the land of the living, by the way, you look much better than last time I saw you."   
  
"Thank you," said Sirius, as Dora caught the edge of the table with her foot and nearly tumbled to the floor.   
  
Remus stood up and only just stopped himself from reaching for her. To her, he reminded himself, we've never met.   
  
He settled for pulling out a chair and ushering her into it. "Sit," he directed. "Your mother mentioned that you'd been working all hours since the World Cup."   
  
She looked up at him with interest. He had thought that the lack of recognition in her eyes would be his undoing, but no. Her bright curiosity as she evaluated him soothed the wound. "Who is our very polite guest?" she asked.   
  
"My friend Remus Lupin," said Sirius.  
  
Her eyes widened. "Not the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?"   
  
"I'm afraid so," said Remus, reluctantly returning to his own seat.   
  
"Mad-Eye knows you."   
  
"Mad-Eye knows everyone," said Sirius dismissively. "You took the Crouches to Azkaban?"   
  
"I did. I've been spending more time at that place— but look who I'm talking to." Sirius and Dora burst into laughter together as Andromeda deposited a bowl of soup and a plate of sandwiches in front of her daughter, admonishing her to sit up straight.   
  
In between bites of food, Dora answered Sirius' questions about the denizens of Azkaban. The elder Crouch had barely moved or made a sound since they'd taken him from the World Cup. The younger Crouch had been more belligerent, but his bravado had evaporated at the first touch of the dementors. Yes, she had checked in on Peter Pettigrew and he was being held in a sort of iron box that no rat could escape.   
  
Sirius didn't ask about Bellatrix, and Dora didn't volunteer anything.   
  
She stood up as soon as she had eaten, catching Andromeda's concerned look as she did. "It'll settle down soon. There's only so many howlers people can send, and no one's really upset with the Aurors at least. Though Kingsley says if this is it for Fudge's political career, he thinks Scrimgeour will try to get himself made Minister of Magic, and I don't even know who'd end up as Head of the Auror Office if he did." She shrugged back into her purple jacket. "Nice to meet you, Professor. I wish I could be back at Hogwarts this year."   
  
For an instant, Remus' mind was full of ridiculous thoughts of having to teach his wife. Marrying a woman thirteen years his junior was one thing, but marrying a student?   
  
Then he realized that she was only alluding to the Tri-Wizard Tournament.   
  
"We may need to call you in for help," he told her, and he tried to make it sound as if he didn't already have a plan to do just that.  
  
_** To be continued. ** _


	16. The Goblet of Fire

The professors were expected to arrive at Hogwarts about a week before the students, and, as there was no concern that dementors might search the Hogwarts Express this year, Remus was among them.  
  
The school was abuzz with plans for the Triwizard Tournament. "As you know, the Tournament will proceed even in the absence of Barty Crouch," Dumbledore told Remus needlessly with a raised eyebrow.  
  
"Yes, Headmaster," said Remus, choosing to ignore any implication that he might have had something to do with Barty Crouch's downfall.  
  
The next time he saw Dumbledore, Dumbledore was deep in conversation with Rufus Scrimgeour. Scrimgeour coolly assessed Remus as soon as he entered the room, but Scrimgeour was the sort of person who coolly assessed everyone. So Remus chose to ignore any implication that the Auror Office had been filled with gossip about why, precisely, the infamous curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position no longer held.  
  
He was about to back away when Dumbledore beckoned him closer. "You know Rufus Scrimgeour, Remus?" asked Dumbledore.  
  
"By reputation only," Remus answered. Scrimgeour nodded to him.  
  
"We will have Aurors on school grounds from time to time this year," said Dumbledore. "Of course, it will need to be subtle. We would not want our guests to feel unwelcome."  
  
It was an unexpected opportunity. It was also a risk to make his request directly to the Head of the Auror Office rather than discussing his plans with Dumbledore first. "I had been meaning to ask you, Headmaster, whether you would approve a lesson plan that required the oversight of the Auror Office."  
  
"Indeed?" asked Dumbledore, and Scrimgeour, too, looked interested.  
  
"I would like the older students to have the opportunity for practical lessons in resisting the Imperius Curse." So what if he was stealing his lesson plan from an actual Death Eater? According to Harry, it had been more than effective.  
  
"You want to cast the Imperius Curse on the students?" asked Scrimgeour sharply.  
  
"I don't _want_ to, but I do think that it's the best way for the students to learn to defend themselves. And I certainly wouldn't do it without specific permission and very close oversight— an Auror in the room at all times."  
  
"That would be the perfect reason to have a visible presence at Hogwarts," said Scrimgeour.  
  
"Though I don't envy you attempting to teach with Alastor Moody watching your every move," added Dumbledore.  
  
Remus laughed. "I'd like to see Mad-Eye again," he said, and he meant it. Bill Weasley's voice from another time echoed in his mind. _Mad-Eye's dead. We saw it… Voldemort's curse hit Mad-Eye full in the face… there was nothing we could do._  
  
"I'll want to be here myself some of the time," said Scrimgeour. "But we'll need a few more in the rotation. Are there any Aurors you would prefer?"  
  
Oh, there most certainly was one Auror Remus preferred to see on a regular basis.  
  
"I'd like to suggest Kingsley Shacklebolt," said Dumbledore before Remus could answer.  
  
"I've no objection to that," said Scrimgeour and Remus nodded his consent. It would be good to see Kingsley again, too, although unlike Mad-Eye Kingsley would have no idea that they'd met before. "And you, Professor? Who do you nominate?"  
  
"I think it would be good for the students to see someone who was one of their own not very long ago," Remus proposed. "I met Nymphadora Tonks recently, and I was very impressed with her."  
  
("Impressed" was one word for it.)  
  
"She's very young," mused Dumbledore. "The fifth years and up, I believe, will remember her as a student."  
  
"I don't suppose there's any reason she shouldn't do it," Scrimgeour agreed at last. "How did you come to meet her?"  
  
"Sirius Black and I have been friends since we were at school," said Remus, knowing that Scrimgeour was most likely already aware of that. "She is his cousin— first cousin once removed, I believe— and we crossed paths at her mother's house. Of course, if you have someone more suitable, I'm happy to defer to your recommendation."  
  
"Tonks will do," Scrimgeour decided. "I suppose you know how to cast the curse?"  
  
"I've never actually done it," said Remus honestly. He declined to add, _but Sirius comes from a family where the children did that sort of thing from the time they could hold a wand and he says it isn't that hard._  
  
"Then we shall have to see that you can, or this whole exercise has been rather pointless," said Dumbledore. The door flew shut behind them; the windows shuttered themselves. "Try to cast the spell on me, Remus."  
  
Remus was taken aback. Dumbledore looked amused. "I shall not, of course, fight you."  
  
"As that would also render the whole exercise rather pointless," Remus said with a levity he did not feel.  
  
"Quite," said Dumbledore. "Now, begin. If you can't bring yourself to curse an old man, you certainly won't be able to bring yourself to curse a school full of children."  
  
Remus hesitated.  
  
"I'm pleased that you look so repulsed," said Dumbledore. "I think I would not approve your lesson plan otherwise. But you do need to get on with it so that Mr. Scrimgeour can go on about the rest of his day."  
  
"Stop thinking and do it," said Scrimgeour harshly.  
  
Remus knew, from the many accounts that he had read, that Scrimgeour was right. " _Imperio_!" he snapped, and his skin crawled with a not altogether unpleasant warmth as he felt his mind, and his wand, connect to Dumbledore.  
  
Dumbledore was so consciously not resisting that Remus laughed and broke the spell. "I'm sorry," he said immediately. "Let me try it again. Imperio!" This time he walked Dumbledore around the room, twice, before seating him in a straight-backed chair in the corner.  
  
"Adequate," said Dumbledore. "Once more, while I resist you slightly."  
  
The warm, crawling sensation intensified. Remus could tell exactly how much Dumbledore was pushing against the spell (not very much, but still more than most students would manage). The feeling was almost playful.  
  
"Good," said Dumbledore when Remus released him. "And this last time, I am going to break your curse. Mr. Scrimgeour, do try to keep my professor from hitting his head when I throw him off."  
  
This was definitely not the time to overthink things. " _Imperio_!" Remus snapped, and the next thing he knew he was on his back. His head rested on a pillow thoughtfully conjured by Scrimgeour.  
  
"Very nice," said Dumbledore. "You lasted almost a whole second. Be certain to forward your schedule to Auror Department and to me at the soonest opportunity. Spread the anti-Imperius lessons throughout the year rather than doing one unbroken unit."  
  
"We'll divide the assignment by Houses, I think," said Scrimgeour. "If only because it's not worth the trouble to try to stop Mad-Eye taking all the Slytherin classes himself."  
  
"We'll give Nymphadora Tonks her old house," Dumbledore suggested. "That leaves you and Kingsley for Gryffindor and Ravenclaw."  
  
Remus vividly remembered Harry's immediate dislike of Scrimgeour (who had allowed himself to be murdered rather than give Harry up to the Death Eaters, but that was neither here nor there) and his easy rapport with Kingsley. "I suggest that Shacklebolt take the Gryffindors," he said quickly. "One of the Gryffindor students will be Harry Potter, and having the Head of the Aurors in his lessons might suggest something that isn't there."  
  
Scrimgeour, politician as well as Auror, understood immediately. "I'll take Ravenclaw, then."  
  
And Remus went off to finalize the schedule.

* * *

  
September 1 dawned gray and stormy. The castle was blanketed with such intense anticipation that it was almost uncomfortable, and Remus was relieved when the older students began tumbling out of the thestral-drawn carriages, shouting and shoving and snogging and hexing. Above all, the students were wet. Remus didn't envy the first years who had to cross the lake.  
  
This year, he was, like the other professors, a familiar sight to the students. Several waved and smiled, and he was tempted to give points to their houses on the spot.  
  
Secrets and anxieties and murderous dark wizards aside, he really did like teaching.  
  
Professor Flitwick sat next to him as usual and eyed him slyly. "Are you going to watch the Sorting, or do you already know where everyone is going again this year?"  
  
Remus laughed. In fact, he knew where very few of these students would be Sorted and he was quite looking forward to the festivities. "Last year was an aberration, I'm afraid."  
  
"Then you wouldn't dare wager, say, supervision of one detention?"  
  
"You're on," Remus agreed, and they shook on it. "First one is yours." Indeed, a sodden, shaking Stewart Ackerly was sent directly to Ravenclaw.  
  
By the time Kevin Whitby had been assigned to Hufflepuff, Remus and Flitwick had guessed wrong on five students apiece, and decided to take this as a hopeful sign that no students would require detention in the near future.  
  
Dumbledore announced the Triwizard Tournament to a roar of surprise. The students fell to speculating as to who would be selected and bewailing the outrage that students under seventeen would not be permitted to enter. The teachers had had so much time already to debate the merits of Cedric Diggory and Angelina Johnson and Roger Davies and Lucian Bole that they had no trouble refraining from joining in.

* * *

  
On the first day of class, the third year Gryffindors strutted into the Defense classroom and announced that they were all ready for their boggart lesson, thank you very much. He remembered how unnerved most of the third-years had looked last year and marveled at the difference.  
  
"Well," he teased them, "I was going to allow you this time to look over your textbooks and make notes on which dark creatures most interest you, but if you're sure you'd rather battle a boggart—"  
  
"We're sure!"  
  
"—Then it does just so happen that one turned up in the castle over the summer." He pointed at a case in the corner that rattled slightly.  
  
The students cheered.  
  
If things kept going this well, he was going to forget about the time travel and the matter of defeating Voldemort and just enjoy his job.  
  
"Line up," he told them. "Wands out. Think about your worst fear, and think about how to make it funny."  
  
 _"Professor Snape,"_ the students stage whispered to one another. " _Try to think of Professor Snape."_  
  
"You cannot control what form the boggart will take," he admonished them. "You would do well not to allow yourself to be surprised any more than necessary."  
  
The students grinned cheekily at him and he braced himself for disaster as he let the boggart out of the case.  
  
Colin Creevey had jumped to the head of the line. In a flash, the boggart became a giant snake with green scales and yellow eyes— a basilisk.   
  
" _Riddikulus_!" cried Colin, and with a crack the snake became a coil of colored ribbon.  
  
"Exceptionally well done!" said Remus, and Colin beamed.  
  
Ginny Weasley was next, and Remus readied himself to step in. He wouldn't make the same mistake with her that he'd once made with Harry and refuse to let her participate, but he wasn't at all convinced that the boggart wouldn't seize on her experiences with Lord Voldemort's diary.  
  
Indeed, a handsome young man arose from a wisp of smoke where the ribbon had been. "Hello, Ginny," he said. "My name is Tom."  
  
"Oh, Ginny, don't make _him_ go away," cooed a pair of girls called Christianne Steele and Heather Hadley.  
  
Ginny ignored them. " _Riddikulus_!" With a crack, Tom Riddle became a clown.  
  
"Wonderful!" Remus complimented, and the boggart turned its attention to Christianne. Christianne's boggart was a banshee, not at all an uncommon fear, and she ably stuffed a gag in its mouth.  
  
The boggart rounded on Heather and sprouted fur, fangs, and punishing claws.  
  
A werewolf.  
  
It was a miracle it hadn't happened last year.  
  
Heather froze. The werewolf bore down on her. Several students screamed.  
  
"Jason!" Remus ordered. "Step in front of Heather and distract it."  
  
To his credit, Jason did just that. The boggart didn't change shapes, as it ought to have done; now that werewolves were at the forefront of his mind, Jason seemed to think that a werewolf was quite a reasonable fear. He did, however, raise his wand. " _Riddikulus_!" The werewolf became a wriggling, mewling puppy.  
  
"Excellent," said Remus, as if this were all perfectly normal. "Now, Quincy…"  
  
They managed to banish the boggart, but the mood in the classroom had changed and the students looked grateful to sink into their seats.  
  
"First of all," he told them, "five points to Gryffindor for each person who successfully faced the boggart."  
  
"So everyone but Heather?" asked Quincy.  
  
"And ten points from Gryffindor because Mr. Scrivens has declined to take the potential danger inherent in facing a boggart seriously," said Remus to a bit of grumbling. "It's not a cause for joking or mockery, and that goes for every one of you who viewed this lesson as an opportunity to have a go at Professor Snape." He turned his attention to Heather. "Miss Hadley, five points to Gryffindor if you will now open your book to the chapter on werewolves and read the summary to us."  
  
Heather did it.  
  
He hadn't planned to have the third years study werewolves until much later, but the opportunity presented itself and he supposed that at least this way he wouldn't be ceding control to Snape.  
  
"That sounds legitimately frightening to me," said Remus when Heather stopped reading, and the class chuckled weakly. "Tell me, Ginny, how would you protect yourself if a werewolf walked into this room right now?"  
  
"I wouldn't have to protect myself," said Ginny. "It's not nighttime, and even if it were the full moon isn't for two more weeks."  
  
"Very good," he told her, and they launched into a discussion of the best ways to spot and kill werewolves should the need arise.  
  
By the book. When it came to werewolves, he taught by the book. No more, no less.  
  
When the class ended, he returned the subject to boggarts and assigned the usual amount of homework.

* * *

  
His next class was sixth years: all houses together, as many students had not achieved an OWL or had decided not to continue with the subject.

The handful of Slytherins slunk into the back seats and eyed him warily; the Ravenclaws took the next two rows, coolly ready to take notes; the Hufflepuffs sat in front of them, polite and respectful; and the Gryffindors— Fred and George and Lee and Alicia and Angelina the others— plunked themselves down in front and grinned at him.  
  
It was concerning, sometimes, how they encouraged these children to define themselves by their houses.  
  
"Wasn't it boggart day for the third years?" asked George. "They didn't seem as happy as they should have."  
  
"Wish we'd had a boggart day," complained Lee. "Our third year, Professor Quirrell would have fainted on the spot if he'd seen a boggart."  
  
"Let's all go back to third year," agreed Alicia.  
  
"Let's discuss the fall of Lord Voldemort instead," Remus suggested. There was a shower of gasps, and a few admonitions _not to say that name, Professor._  
  
He led them through a discussion of Aurors and Unforgivable Curses and imprisonments in Azkaban.  
  
"Are we only talking about this because Sirius Black is your friend?" interrupted Lucian Bole. "Saw your picture with him in the _Prophet_ over the summer."  
  
"He had to look at the pictures, because he can't read the words," volunteered Angelina.  
  
"Five points from Gryffindor," said Remus automatically, wondering if he was going to spend the whole first day of classes taking points from his old House because none of them knew when to shut their mouths. "As to Mr. Bole's question, I wouldn't be averse to bringing Sirius in for a guest lecture later this term, but we are discussing the chaos that surrounded the last dark period in our history so that you will be better prepared to face that chaos should it ever arise again. All of the students in fourth year and above will have a particular project in this class throughout the year, and that project is going to be learning to resist the Imperius Curse."  
  
There was another round of gasps.  
  
"Once a month or so, an Auror will be present in class to supervise as you try to throw off the Imperius Curse."  
  
"If we're going to throw it off, that means someone will have put it on," said Cedric Diggory.  
  
Remus watched the Weasley twins bite back what had obviously been a comment about Cedric's powers of observation.  
  
"That's correct, Cedric. If you don't want to learn the lessons in a practical manner, there will always be an option to do an extra reading and write an extra essay."  
  
"Oh, I want the practical lesson, of course, Professor," said Cedric, and Remus could almost sense that he was campaigning for a position as the Hogwarts Champion. "When do we get our first go?"  
  
"Next week. And before that time, you will all write me an essay explaining why we are not practicing Crucio or Avada Kedavra in class."  
  
They stumbled out, unsure whether to laugh.  
  
(In truth, it would be a very easy essay to write. There was no use in learning to resist Crucio or Avada Kedavra because there was no defending against them.)  
  


* * *

  
The third class was seventh years. There were only a few of them; they had had the misfortune to be taught by Gilderoy Lockhart during their OWL year. They were so withdrawn that he didn't know whether any of his lecture had landed with them. On the bright side, he didn't have to take any more points from Gryffindor.  
  


* * *

  
The fourth class of the day was the Slytherin third years. Three of them refused outright to face the boggart, and Remus gave them a detention which he quickly revoked when the boggart rounded on them anyway. (Their fears: spiders, blood, and vampires.)  
  
None of the students smiled at him or thanked him. Their open disdain was something of a relief.  
  


* * *

  
The final class of the day was Gryffindor first years. Remus didn't dare try anything practical with students who had no experience with casting charms or hexes— in some cases, had no experience with magic at all. Instead, he set them to decoding famous riddles of sphinxes.  
  
"There is a house," he told them. "One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?"  
  
"A hospital," said Dennis Creevey, who was somehow even tinier than his brother.  
  
"Not a bad effort," Remus said. "But this is a house that everyone is blind when he enters."  
  
The students stared at him blankly. There were no further guesses.  
  
"The answer is 'a school,'" he told them. "Now that you know a bit more about how sphinxes think, let's try this next one. What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?"  
  
It was the most famous riddle of all; even Muggles knew it as the Riddle of the Sphinx, and one of the students answered so quickly that it was clear he'd heard it before: "A person. A baby crawls on all fours, then walks on two legs, then gets old and walks with a cane."  
  
"Good," said Remus. "Let's try one that's a little harder." He recited:  
  
 _As I was going to St. Ives,_  
 _I met a man with seven wives,_  
 _Each wife had seven sacks,_  
 _Each sack had seven cats,_  
 _Each cat had seven kits:_  
 _Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,_  
 _How many were there going to St. Ives?_  
  
Namrata Vemulakonda said that she would divorce her husband if he had six other wives, and she would only go to St. Ives with him if that was where she signed the paperwork.  
  
Bertrand Cotterill suggested that no man would want that many wives or that many cats.  
  
Margarita Jewell said that no cats were going to put up with being told to going to St. Ives or anywhere else, and hadn't the sphinx ever met a cat?  
  
Bertrand told Margarita that she smelled like a cat.  
  
Namrata told Bertrand that if this were real, the sphinx would have eaten him by now, and no one would have cared.  
Remus took points from them both. He was reasonably sure that Simona MacAlastair only gave the correct answer ("one") because she was tired of listening to her classmates' argument.  
  


* * *

  
At dinner that night, Snape asked, with mock disbelief, whether Remus had really tried to get a group of eleven-year-old Gryffindors to use logic. Remus was half-inclined to agree with him, but limited himself to pointing out how well Simona had done. Snape smiled thinly and thanked Remus for taking so many points from Gryffindor. He pointed meaningfully at the hourglasses that tracked the points. Gryffindor was in last place.  
  


* * *

  
Two hours later, Professor McGonagall knocked on Remus' door.  
  
"Severus was quite right," she said, but she was smiling. "You did take a lot of points from my Gryffindors today."  
  
"Only because Gryffindors are all horrible," said Remus with a tired smile of his own. "I don't remember the first day being this… eventful last year."  
  
"It's not uncommon, you know," she said, seating herself beside him. "The first year, you're so caught up in everything being new that you don't have time to be a perfectionist about the details. Meanwhile, the students become overly familiar and try to find out exactly where you draw the line with any poor behavior from the ones they perceive you as liking the best."  
  
"So you're telling me that the rest of this year will be just as difficult as today?" he asked ruefully.  
  
"I'm asking you not to be discouraged if it is. Although I know for a fact that Angelina Johnson regrets speaking out of turn in your class rather than letting you deal with Bole yourself." McGonagall shook her head. "Between the two of us, I understand her temptation. I do hope she's selected as the Hogwarts champion in the tournament. It's down to her and Diggory, so at least I won't have to listen to Severus crow about a Slytherin champion."  
  
"Both Angelina and Cedric are sixth years," Remus observed, thinking of his disengaged seventh year class.  
  
"Unfortunate, isn't it? This has been in the planning stages for at least ten years, and we happen to have an unusually ill-suited crop of seventh years when it finally comes. Johnson and Diggory are both capable now, but if this had been planned for next year when they'd had another year of education— well, I suppose the idea is that they meet students from other schools and broaden their horizons, but it would be nice to win."  
  
"It would be, at that," Remus agreed, knowing that he wouldn't be able to care about the outcome until he was certain that there would only be three champions in the competition. Perhaps he wouldn't be able to care about the outcome until everyone had lived through the competition. "What about the first years?" he asked, not caring how abruptly he'd changed the subject. "Very rowdy and very clever?"  
  
"I think that sums it up. I'm pleased that Simona MacAlastair spoke up in your class. She cried all night last night."  
  
"Homesick or something more?" asked Remus with concern.  
  
"Very shy and very homesick. But yes, very clever as well." Remus made a mental note to be especially kind to Simona. "I hope she's able to survive sharing a dormitory with the Vemulakonda and Jewell girls. They're both rather… forthright."  
  
"I noticed," agreed Remus, suddenly feeling much better about the day's classes.  
  
McGonagall seemed to notice the change in him. "I'm glad you're back," she said softly. "If anyone was going to last more than one year in that position, I'm glad it was you."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Did you happen to take any particular steps to stay in the position for more than one year?"  
  
"I tried to avoid dying and needing longterm hospitalization," Remus deadpanned. "No, I don't know how it happened."  
  
"I suppose it's too much to hope for that You-Know-Who has weakened so much that his curse broke."  
  
Remus fervently wished that that could be it, too.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Mini-quote from Deathly Hallows regarding Mad-Eye's death in this chapter.


	17. The Goblet of Fire 2

Kingsley arrived well before the fourth year Gryffindors' lesson was to start and introduced himself to Remus. The conversation had an off-center, dizzy feel. Kingsley didn't know Remus at all, but Remus knew Kingsley quite well. He'd last seen Kingsley when they'd run together onto the Hogwarts grounds during that final battle in the future-past.  
  
Had Kingsley lived or died? Had the changed timeline given him another chance at life, or ruined a life that would have been exceptional after Voldemort's defeat? Remus didn't have any way of knowing.  
  
"Signal me if you think something's gone wrong or you need to stop for whatever reason," Kingsley offered as the halls began to grow louder with shouts and stomping feet. "I'll have an Auror emergency."  
  
The students exploded into the classroom before Remus had even managed to thank Kingsley for his kindness. The Imperius classes had been the talk of the school for a week, and of course this particular group was more than delighted at the prospect of going first.  
  
They slammed into their seats, stashed their bags, and pulled out their wands.  
  
Remus didn't bother teasing or delaying. He presented Kingsley to the students and asked Parvati Patil whether she wanted the practical lesson or the essay option.  
  
"The practical lesson," she said, as if it shouldn't have been a question. (He knew it wasn't going to be, not for any of this group. Perhaps Neville. He'd let it slide if Neville opted out this time. Then he'd talk to him in private before the next session.)  
  
"I'm going to try to take control of your mind," he reminded her. "I won't ask you to do anything embarrassing or dangerous, and we have an Auror right here to supervise, but this is considered one of the Unforgivable Curses for a reason. Having an outside force take over your reason, your autonomy, your very being is far more terrifying than any of the creatures you faced last year."  
  
He hadn't been thinking of his own lycanthropy, per se, but he noticed that Harry, Ron, and Hermione all shot him sympathetic looks.  
  
He returned his attention to Parvati. "Fight back," he told her. "Do whatever you can to avoid doing what I tell you to do."  
  
"How will I know what you're telling me to do?" she asked, eyes flashing.  
  
Perhaps he shouldn't have started with this group, after all. Every one of them was going to fight, and Harry was probably going to break Remus on his first try. (That was why Harry was going last, like it or not.)  
  
"You'll know," he assured Parvati. "Ready?" She nodded firmly.  
  
" _Imperio_!"  
  
Parvati's mind was so young and so girlish that Remus immediately felt like a child molester. Perhaps he should have started with one of the students he knew better after all. _Walk across the room,_ he signaled Parvati, and she did. _Pick up the chalk. Write the following: Defense Against the Dark Arts is my favorite subject._  
  
The class chuckled.  
  
Remus released Parvati, who stumbled, then caught herself. "How did that feel?" her asked her.  
  
"Like… like it… I don't even know what happened." She glanced around aimlessly.  
  
"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked.  
  
She pointed. "I was standing there, and you were going to curse me."  
  
Remus gestured at Parvati's closest friend, Lavender, who was anxiously perched on the edge of her seat. "Lavender, tell Parvati what happened."  
  
Lavender did, and Parvati looked with shock at her own handwriting on the blackboard.  
  
"Now, we all know that Parvati's favorite class is Divination," Remus reminded the students. (He was singularly aware of that because Lavender and Parvati were perpetually attempting to show each other their star charts behind his back during class.)  
  
"I like this class too!" Parvati objected, and a little of the grimy feeling that came with casting dark magic on a child fell away.  
  
"Thank you," he told her. "My point is that you were obviously not in control. Write a note to yourself now about how this felt so that you can review next time you attempt to break the curse. Ron, you're next." Ron scrambled to his feet. "Remember, Ron, Parvati told you that she didn't remember anything after I cast the curse. Try to hold onto your thoughts and perceptions when I cast."  
  
"Yes, Sir," said Ron, who was gripping his wand almost too tightly.  
  
" _Imperio_!"  
  
Ron's mind, like Parvati's, felt unbearably young as soon as Remus initiated the connection. _Walk to the corner, he told Ron. Pick up those books that have fallen to the floor and line them up on the shelf._  
  
Ron obeyed.  
  
Remus wondered how many times one had to cast this curse before it felt empowering instead of revolting. He broke the connection, and Ron, like Parvati, glanced about confusedly. "Well, if the Imperius Curse makes me neat, Mum might want you to cast it on me more often," he suggested."  
  
"You know what you were doing?" Remus asked as the class giggled nervously.  
  
"Yeah," said Ron. "But doing it felt so good, I forgot to fight against it."  
  
"Thank you, Ron. Make a note of that. Neville, you're next."  
  
Neville made no protestations about wanting to write the essay instead, and so Remus cast the spell quickly before Neville could think of objecting.   
  
_Draw your wand, _Remus thought at him. _Cast Lumos._  
  
It was the first time Remus had used the curse to take control of someone else's magic. The connection strengthened. He hated it so much that he almost forgot to have Neville cast Nox before releasing him.  
  
Neville, like Parvati, had no idea what he had done. The same proved to be true for Dean, Seamus, Lavender, and to her obvious irritation, Hermione.  
  
"Thank you for being patient, Harry," Remus said at last. "Your turn."  
  
There was a smattering of cheers from his classmates, all of them now eager to see someone, anyone, fight the curse.  
  
Harry stood and faced Remus, looking so much like James that it took Remus' breath away.  
  
 _Just try it, Moony, _he could almost hear James taunting. _If you don't mind ending up halfway across the castle stuffed into a suit of armor. I'd send Peter to get you out before dinner. Probably._  
  
" _Imperio_!" Remus snapped. _Walk over to the blackboard._ Harry fairly floated. _Pick up the eraser. _Harry did. _Erase the words Parvati wrote._  
  
Harry was halfway through when Remus felt him push back. Not as hard as Dumbledore had, certainly not enough to push Remus backwards, but enough that Remus could almost sense the question. _Why_?  
  
"Watch!" Kingsley snapped at the other students from somewhere far away. "He's fighting. Stand up so you can see his eyes."  
  
Harry held the eraser in front of him, trying both to erase the words and not to erase them. Remus gave him one more push. _Erase the words. You want to erase the words._  
  
Harry obeyed, rigidly. Remus ended the curse and ushered the students back to their seats.  
  
"That was truly impressive," said Kingsley to Harry. "You might break it the next time you're under."  
  
"Can you tell your classmates what you felt?" Remus asked Harry. The other stared at him with obvious interest.  
  
"It—was really relaxing, like Ron said." Unsurprisingly, Harry's first instinct was to share credit with Ron. "Like floating. Then I heard you telling me to walk across the room and pick up the eraser, and I didn't mind doing it, but then I wondered why. So then I was trying to do it and trying not to do it at the same time."  
  
"I wonder if the curse would have been easier for you to break it if I'd asked you to do something more absurd," Remus mused. "Stay after for a quick word, Harry. The rest of you are free to go—no homework."  
  
Some of the other students wandered over to talk to Kingsley; Ron, it appeared, was already acquainted with him. The others left, chattering excitedly.  
  
"Can I have extra Imperius lessons this year?" asked Harry eagerly. "Like the dementor lessons last year?"  
  
"I don't think you'll need extra lessons. I expected that you'd be exceptionally good at this, and you are."  
  
"Why would you expect that?" asked Harry.  
  
"You're exceptionally good at most aspects of Defense Against the Dark Arts," Remus pointed out, but Harry didn't appear to take that as much of an explanation. "It's true."  
  
"So's Hermione, and she didn't even know what was happening."  
  
"Yes, I'm afraid this is something Hermione won't be able to learn ahead of time from a book."  
  
"That won't stop her trying."  
  
"Nor should it," Remus agreed. "You wrote a letter to your godfather after the Quidditch World Cup. He shared some of it with me." Harry nodded. "You mentioned disliking the way it felt when the veela attempted to persuade you to support Bulgaria."  
  
"That's a completely different feeling."  
  
"That's true. But your desire not to be told what to do or what to think is rather—rather stronger than average. I don't know if it's innate to you or if it's something that you developed growing up with an aunt and uncle who weren't especially reasonable when it came to setting down rules for you."  
  
For a moment, Harry didn't look like he knew whether he wanted to laugh or cry.  
  
"Sit down," Remus told him.  
  
"I'd rather not," said Harry.  
  
"You see?" asked Remus with mingled affection and realization. "You don't like to be told what to do. I only wanted you to sit because you fought the curse the hardest but you got the least chance to recover."  
  
"I wish you'd let me have another go at it," said Harry. "It's nothing like as hard as the dementor lessons were."  
  
"It's much harder for me, I'm afraid," Remus admitted. "I don't like casting magic that dark at all."  
  
"But we have to learn how!"  
  
"Exactly, but I don't enjoy it. I used to enjoy our dementor lessons. After you learned to stay conscious, that is."  
  
Harry made a face that, once again, reminded Remus intensely of James.  
  
"Have you spoken to Sirius?" Remus asked, suddenly realizing that in the hectic start to the school year, he himself had not.  
  
"I wrote him about the Triwizard Tournament and how unfair it is that there isn't any Quidditch this year."  
  
"Good," said Remus. At least Sirius wouldn't feel entirely forgotten. "All right, catch up with Ron and Hermione."  
  


* * *

  
Mad-Eye barreled into the Slytherin fourth-years' lesson with his usual flair five minutes after class had begun.  
  
"You're Professor R. J. Lupin?" he asked.  
  
"I am," said Remus, fighting to hide a smile.  
  
"Then you won't mind if I ask you to prove it."  
  
"I expect no less. Constant vigilance."  
  
Mad-Eye harrumphed, his mechanical eye spinning faster in its socket as if to determine whether Remus was laughing on the inside. "Tell me," said Mad-Eye, "Whether you once tracked a Death Eater to a Muggle bakery and then got yourself hit with a Confundus Charm before you could take him in."  
  
This time Remus did laugh, so unexpected was the old memory. "Yes. But I did break the body-bind on James so he could get us both out of there." It had taken everything in James to get them both home, with Remus laughing all the way and pestering _Jamey-Jamey-Jamey _to loosen up and have some fun.  
  
James' fun had come later when he'd retold the story a thousand times, making Remus sound more ridiculous with each and every re-telling.  
  
It had been soon before Remus had gone north in search of werewolves. It had been soon before he and Sirius had found themselves with nothing to say to each other if they were left in a room alone.  
  
"I don't think my father would want me to be put under the Imperius Curse by someone who let himself get Confunded in a Muggle bakery," piped up Draco Malfoy.  
  
"You have every right to choose the essay option in that case," said Remus.  
  
"I do," drawled Draco.  
  
"Vincent? Gregory?" Remus asked Draco's usual companions. They both declined as well. "How about you, Blaise?"  
  
"I've got better things to do tonight than write an essay," Blaise Zabini declared. Blaise was perhaps the only student in the room was was completely unconcerned with following Draco's lead.  
  
"Very well. Stand up, please."  
  
Blaise was the strangely beautiful child of a famously beautiful mother, more hypnotizing than hypnotized throughout his life to this point. Remus gave him the usual instructions about fighting the curse. Blaise listened with disinterest.  
  
" _Imperio_!"  
  
And Blaise became the only student other than Harry to fight back. He didn't successfully throw off the curse, but he left Remus certain that this was not his first lesson of this kind.  
  
"Very well done, Blaise," Remus praised. Blaise loped back to his seat and, when asked to describe the sensations, simply told his classmates that he didn't like to be told what to do.  
  
He and Harry had that in common, it seemed.  
  
Most of the girls, inspired by Blaise, decided to let Remus cast the curse on them. Millicent Bulstrode, Remus suspected, didn't try at all. Daphne Greengrass didn't do much better. Pansy Parkinson sniffed that she would write the essay, and Theodore Nott agreed that so would he.  
  
The class was necessarily shorter than the Gryffindor class, and so Remus let Mad-Eye tell the students about how the Ministry had sorted out who was and wasn't under the Imperius Curse when these students had been babies… and how the Ministry would do again if it came to that. If Mad-Eye wanted to sound vaguely threatening, Remus didn't mind.  
  
None of these students gathered around at the end of class to talk to Mad-Eye the way the Gryffindors had talked to Kingsley, and that left Mad-Eye and Remus with a few moments to themselves before it was time for Remus' next class.  
  
"I'm glad you've done this," Mad-Eye said after casting an anti-eavesdropping charm. "It's the perfect excuse to have a bunch of Aurors poking around during the tournament. You know Dumbledore asked me as a personal favor to teach for one year if you weren't able to come back?"  
  
"I didn't know," said Remus.  
  
"Guess he wouldn't have wanted you to feel like he was hoping for your funeral. God knows I wasn't. I would have done it for Dumbledore, but this is better. Much better. More sets of eyes and ears. Can't have too many with Karkaroff running around. A coward and a turncoat he may be, but there's someone who wouldn't look so uncomfortable casting an Unforgivable Curse as you do."  
  
"I look uncomfortable?"  
  
"Better that you do. Don't ever, ever normalize this for the students, but don't hide it from them, either. And don't show off for your Auror escort."  
  
"I wouldn't dream of it," Remus lied. And it wasn't entirely a lie. He had no intention of showing off for Mad-Eye or Kingsley or Scrimgeour. However, if something were to happen in a Hufflepuff class that made Dora suddenly view him as deeply heroic and possibly also handsome…  
  
"Especially not Nymphadora Tonks!" added Mad-Eye with such fervor that Remus almost worried that he'd been broadcasting his thoughts. "You were right to pick her. I picked her too. She's the last protege I'll ever have and she has every chance to be great. But she's young and she's reckless and she'll probably show up to your class wearing a leather skirt with pink hair down to her waist."  
  
Remus pretended that he wasn't looking forward to it.  
  


* * *

  
The Ravenclaws' lesson was a welcome break from what had so far been more a psychological experience than an intellectual one. Three students declined the practical lesson in favor of the essay. The rest took the lesson in stride after peppering Scrimgeour with a dozen questions about his role in the class, his career in general, and what would happen if something went wrong.  
  
When the class was over, the students casually resumed worrying over their next Potions exam; it seemed that they had just learned that Snape only allowed students who had achieved an Outstanding on their OWLs to study at the NEWT level.  
  


* * *

  
"Wotcher, Professor!"  
  
She had beaten him to his classroom and was sitting on his desk as if she owned it.  
  
She was not wearing a leather skirt, but her hair was the bright pink that she particularly favored.  
  
"Hello, Nymphadora Tonks," he greeted her.  
  
To his delight, her features creased into a scowl. " _Don't _call me Nymphadora."  
  
It had been so long since he'd heard that implied threat.  
  
He'd missed her.  
  
She jumped off the desk, and he instinctively reached out to steady her, but for once she was light on her feet. "It's only, I've never liked that name and I can't imagine what my mother was thinking, choosing it. Of course, when you come from a family where they get their names off a star chart, maybe you don't understand how things work. You'd think Dad could have talked her out of it. He says that the moment he saw me in her arms he would have given her anything, though."  
  
"I understand," he agreed. "Tonks it is. Thank you for helping out."  
  
"Oh, it's my pleasure! Anyone would take any excuse to be back at Hogwarts this year. Don't you wish there had been a Triwizard Tournament when you were at school?"  
  
Remus had never wished anything of the kind. He wouldn't have entered himself— what if a Task had fallen on the full moon?— and he would have been crushed if James and Sirius had traveled to another school to take their chances as champions. (And one of them would have been chosen, he was sure.) "I never thought about it," he said. "I wasn't much of a standout. Now you, I'm sure, would have been the Hogwarts champion."  
  
She snorted. "I'd've tried, but I spent more time in detention than in class, and that might have been a hindrance."  
  
"You obviously spent sufficient time in class to be chosen for the Auror program. NEWTs in every core subject. It astonishes me that anyone even makes it into Severus Snape's NEWT-level potions class, since he demands an Outstanding OWL."  
  
"Oh, that was easy enough," she said casually. "One of my roommates was the best Potions student in twenty years. Snape even smiled at her once in a while." She shivered theatrically. "It was odd, that. You think that you've never seen him smile and it might make him less frightening, and then he does smile and it's even scarier than when he's glaring at you. But anyway, you couldn't sleep in a dormitory with Penny for seven years and not have some of her potions skill rub off on you."  
  
"Convenient," said Remus.  
  
"Definitely. Though Snape never could get his mind around the idea that a Hufflepuff could be good at Potions. Or anything, really. I hope someone takes a picture of his face when they announce Cedric Diggory as the Hogwarts champion. But I suppose you're rooting for the Johnson girl from Gryffindor?"  
  
"I'm a professor. I don't take sides," he said, sounding a little too prim for his own ears.  
  
"Of course not," she returned, making herself sound just as prim. "This lot that we're working with today, are they all as extraordinary as I expect them to be?"  
  
"The ringleader, to the extent that there is one, is Ernie Macmillan. Justin Finch-Fletchley is a Muggle-born who unfortunately spent half of his second year petrified by a basilisk and has had to work hard to catch up ever since. Susan Bones is quite bright, but usually rather quiet, and Hannah Abbott too… yes, I think you'll find them up to your standards."  
  
They broke off their conversation as the students filtered in.  
  
"Class, I'd like to introduce you to Miss Tonks, the Auror who will be supervising us today. She happens to be the only new candidate accepted into the Auror program in many years. The Ministry plucked her straight out of Hufflepuff House."  
  
The students cheered delightedly, and Dora made some sort of hand signal at them which they enthusiastically returned. (Remus didn't think he'd ever seen anything like it before. Gryffindor didn't have any secret hand signals.)  
  
Every one of the students chose to try to break the curse— Ernie let slip that Cedric had told them that they ought to— and every one of them shared his or her observations with the group, although none of them made any real progress.  
  
It was all in all the most pleasant lesson in extraordinarily dark magic that Remus could imagine.  
  
He was about to release the students when Dora raised her hand.  
  
"Yes, Miss Tonks?" he asked.  
  
"Professor, would you put the curse on me?"  
  
"Absolutely not!" he snapped, too hastily. He already knew so much of her while she knew so little of him. Taking control of her, even for a moment, was unthinkable. "That is to say," he corrected in more moderate tones, "that you are here to supervise me. If I were to cast the curse on your successfully, that would defeat the purpose of the exercise."  
  
"The purpose of the exercise is for the students to learn how to fight the curse. It's easier if they see what fighting it looks like from someone who knows how." She looked a challenge at him. "That is, if you think you could put the curse on me in the first place."  
  
"I have my doubts," he said, and the students and Dora all laughed appreciatively.  
  
"I wouldn't offer if I had any doubts about you. You'd never hurt these students, I can tell from the way you chose what you had them do. You didn't make a joke out of any of them. You don't need supervision, you need an assistant."  
  
"I want the supervision," he told her. "I don't take casting this curse lightly. I know that as an Auror you've seen all sorts of things—"  
  
"I heard Daphne Greengrass tell her sister that in the Slytherin class the Auror said you used to track Death Eaters," piped up Hannah Abbot.  
  
"What Mad-Eye actually told them was that I managed to get myself confunded while chasing a Death Eater, and my friend had his hands full keeping us both alive," Remus corrected. "I'm no expert."  
  
"Is he always this modest?" Dora asked the students.  
  
"Yes," said Ernie. "Always."  
  
"Then I must modestly inform you that class is over, you have no homework, and I will see you next week."  
  
The students rose as one and trooped out of the room. Dora hung back, looking slightly abashed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have tried to tell you how to teach your class in front of the students."  
  
"That's quite all right," he told her. "You can feel free to tell me how to teach my class now that they're gone."  
  
She laughed. "It hasn't been very long since I was in their place, and I wished I had a Defense teacher as good as you."  
  
"They are usually rather terrible, aren't they?"  
  
"The worst. Most of them had never read a book about dark magic, let alone seen it in person." She cocked her head. "Who was your friend in the story Mad-Eye told? Was it Sirius?"  
  
"James Potter."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Have you seen Sirius since I last saw you?"  
  
She nodded. "Twice. He and Mum are still working on pressing the Ministry about the Dementors. Scary when Mum gets like that— all political— even if it's for a good cause."  
  
For the second time, Remus reminded himself that he ought to be paying more attention to Sirius.  
  
"I suppose I should be going," Dora said, and Remus couldn't think of a single excuse that might persuade her to stay, especially since his last class of the day would be arriving in a few moments.  
  
"Thank you for coming. I look forward to seeing you again."  
  
"I look forward to seeing you, too." She fairly skipped out the door, leaving the room much too empty.  
  
It could have gone worse, Remus supposed.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Tonks' potions genius Hogwarts roommate Penny Haywood is a character from the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery game and is the property of Jam City/Warner Brothers.


	18. Sirius, Alone

The little house in Hogsmeade was unlike anywhere Sirius had ever lived before. It was smaller by far than Grimmauld Place or Potter Manor; it was larger by far than his school dormitory or the flat he'd had after leaving school. (It was also by far larger than his cell in Azkaban, but that wasn't so much a place that a person lived as a place that a person survived if he was lucky and stubborn enough.)  
  
It was quieter than any of those places, too.  
  
Hogsmeade's main street could be reached by a short walk down a hill. Sirius supposed he could find all the noise he wanted in the Three Broomsticks, where Rosmerta continued to treat him as someone who needed coddling.  
  
He couldn't quite put his finger on why he didn't like to go there.  
  
From the back windows of the house, he could just barely see the Shrieking Shack. Sometimes he found himself staring at it for hours. The happiest moments of his life had been spent running about on the full moon.  
  
He was glad that now there was a potion that controlled Remus' symptoms almost completely. Really, he was. He didn't like to see Remus in pain— he had never liked that, even if he had liked the adventures that having a werewolf for a friend had granted him.  
  
But he didn't like being obsolete. Remus didn't need him now, not like he had, and Remus didn't miss those days, not like Sirius did.  
  
He missed those days a lot.  
  
He missed James.  
  
He didn't know whether to push James out of his mind or linger on the thought of him.  
  
He didn't know why some days he couldn't do anything— not even comb his hair— without thinking of James, and some days he could calmly go about the business of trying to figure out where Voldemort had stashed his Horcruxes completely undistracted by memories of the couple who had brought Voldemort to the point that allowed for a Horcrux hunt.  
  
After twelve long years of longing for freedom, sometimes he stayed inside for days on end and didn't realize he'd done it.  
  
He always remembered to carry the mirror with him when he did go out, but Harry only contacted him in the middle of the evening, after school-sanctioned activities were over and the students had returned to their common rooms. When Harry told him about the Triwizard Cup, Sirius went on at great length about how Igor Karkaroff had been a Death Eater and Harry wasn't to let himself be alone with anyone from Durmstrang. He could see Harry's look of disbelief:  
  
 _After everything you did in school, you're telling me not even to talk to someone?_  
  
 _Have you forgotten what it's like to be fourteen years old?_  
  
Sirius wished that he could answer that in fact he knew perfectly well what it was to be fourteen, but he had no idea how to be thirty-four. Nearly thirty-five.  
  
He hoped everyone forgot his birthday in November. He didn't want to acknowledge it. It was lucky that almost no one left alive knew when it was. Andromeda had known it once, but probably had long forgotten; he only vaguely remembered that her birthday was sometime in midwinter. Remus might remember if asked, but Remus was busy with his teaching and his mysterious not-wife and wasn't going to come up with a date spontaneously. (Sirius still knew Remus' birthday, mainly because Remus had been exactly seventeen days older than James. Some years the four of them had just had an unending party from March 10 through March 27.)  
  


* * *

  
The best day in all of September was the Saturday when the Weasley twins unexpectedly knocked at his door with a case full of their newest inventions.  
  
Sirius couldn't tell them apart, even though neither Remus nor Harry seemed to have much trouble. Halfway through the visit, he'd drawn their names over their heads with his wand. They laughed and said they didn't mind if he got their names wrong— their own mother did, though not as often as they pretended. They promised that next time they would wear their F and G jumpers, if that would make their investor happy.  
  
It didn't make him feel happy. It made him feel patronized. He was old and stupid and couldn't tell these young geniuses apart.  
  
"We have loads of time this year, because we didn't get enough OWLs to keep taking half the classes we were taking before," Fred explained.  
  
"And no Quidditch because of the Triwizard Tournament," added George resentfully.  
  
"We should just drop out," said Fred, and Sirius could tell that this was a conversation they had had many times before.  
  
"I assume that you've considered the obvious hiccough in that plan," said Sirius.  
  
"You mean, that our Mum would murder us?"  
  
"And that right after that, she'd find out where you got your seed money and murder me. Or does she already know?"  
  
The twins shook their heads, looking horrified. "She thinks that because we've stopped trying to raise money, we've given it up," explained George. "No need to disabuse her of that notion just yet."  
  
"Things are a lot more peaceful now," completed Fred.  
  
"And of course the two of you love a peaceful life."  
  
"Well, there's different sorts of peaceful, aren't there?"  
  
Sirius wondered if George knew just how right he was.

* * *

  
The worst day in all of September was the day he went to Andromeda's house to work on the draft lawsuit against the Ministry. They had no intention of filing the lawsuit; the plan was for Sirius to withdraw the threat when he saw indications of real prison reform.  
  
He hated the idea of withdrawing the threat.  
  
He wanted someone to pay for what had been done to him and to Harry. Barty Crouch sitting in Azkaban himself wasn't enough.  
  
He knew that he was supposed to get satisfaction out of helping others, but he had a hard time caring about anyone other than Harry and how Harry's formative years had been pain and darkness where they should have been laughter and light.  
  
He stayed for dinner. After dinner Tonks dueled him at his request and kicked his arse worse even than Remus had on the day they'd let Harry go.

Tonks apologetically explained that she was an Auror and she did this kind of thing all the time, and swore that Sirius was magnificent for being so out of practice.  
  
He looked at her and pictured the five-year-old he remembered her being, and thought again of how old he was and how much of his life had been wasted and how no one would pay for it.

* * *

  
There were no good days in October.  
  
In fact, October felt like one long miserable day because Sirius stopped sleeping.  
  
He slept occasionally, of course. His body knew exactly what to do to keep him alive. But he slept so little, and so poorly, that he stopped going to bed at all.  
  
He went to the Three Broomsticks more often. He got to know the regular patrons and he talked to them, but somehow he felt even more alone in the crowds than he felt in his empty little house with its empty bedrooms and its view of the Shrieking Shack.  
  
He spent other nights at the Hog's Head. Sometimes he was spoiling for a fight, but no one wanted to fight him. Sometimes Aberforth Dumbledore looked at him with a thinly disguised concern that aggravated him beyond measure.  
  
He rarely let his mind rest by transforming into Padfoot. He'd spent thirteen years with little choice but to live as a dog; he wouldn't do it by choice now. He recalled his words to Wormtail the previous spring:  
  
 _If you made a better rat than a human, Peter, that isn't much to brag about!_  
  
He didn't feel like a good dog or a good human anymore.

* * *

  
There were no good days in October, but there was one worst day.  
  
Andromeda insisted on coming with him to the Ministry when he signed the agreement not to seek recompense for his imprisonment.

They both read the agreement carefully. It was clear that the agreement would be null and void if the changes to Azkaban were revoked. The dementors were not removed entirely, but their numbers were reduced by ninety percent and they were permitted only in the corridors where the most dangerous prisoners were housed. Human guards would patrol those corridors, too, to eliminate the problems caused by dementors' inability to see.  
  
It wasn't a perfect deal.  
  
It was a vast improvement.  
  
It was safer and more humane.  
  
It made Sirius feel like his own personal dementor was hovering above his head.  
  
Andromeda took his arm as they emerged into the Ministry's long, splendid front hall. The Fountain of Magical Brethren sparkled cloyingly at them.  
Sirius was about to ask Andromeda what she thought he ought to do about the horrible excuse for a house-elf currently haunting their ancestral home when he felt her grip on his arm tighten.  
  
"Anna?" She was pale and her jaw was set. The Black mask snapped into place. He didn't like it at all.  
  
"Keep your eyes on the horizon," she whispered. "They won't acknowledge us and we won't acknowledge them."  
  
He didn't keep his eyes on the horizon even though he knew, without seeing, who Andromeda must have noticed.  
  
It was just as well, because while he didn't doubt that Narcissa would have ignored them both, Lucius Malfoy did not have the restraint of his wife.

"Sirius Black," Lucius greeted. "So it's true what I've heard. You've used was little influence you will ever have to pick a fight with the dementors, of all things."  
  
James would have said something witty about how Lucius ought to be grateful since no doubt he would end up in Azkaban one of these days.  
  
Remus would have said something infuriatingly polite about how he was grateful to be in a position to do anything to make the world a safer place.  
  
Almost all of Sirius' ancestors would have found a way to force Lucius to acknowledge Andromeda, thus setting up Lucius and Narcissa for an ugly showdown once they got home.  
  
Sirius stood unable to bring a word to his lips. He was as voiceless as he'd been in Azkaban.  
  
Andromeda tugged at his arm and they left, Lucius' chuckle and Narcissa's quiet hiss in their wake.  
  
When they got back to Andromeda's house, she insisted that they had come off the better in the meeting and that Sirius had simply not responded to Lucius because Lucius was beneath him.  
  
Sirius pretended to believe the lie because he didn't have the energy to do anything else.  
  
When Tonks came over to hear the details of the new law— which, after all, affected her as a member of the most elite part of law enforcement— Sirius let Andromeda do the talking. He did ask Tonks if she would spar with him again, and she hesitated, suggesting that he had had a rough day and this might not be the best of times to duel with an Auror. He insisted. She defeated him even more soundly than she had the first time, and looked even sadder about it.  
  
Andromeda asked, rather forcefully, more than once, whether Sirius wanted to stay the night. Ted volunteered to fetch dinner from any restaurant Sirius named within Apparating distance. Tonks suggested that they find a concert or a Muggle movie to enjoy.  
  
Sirius got tired of all of their pity and left.  
  
He bought a case of fire whiskey before he returned to the cottage. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the till, he almost jumped at the vision he presented. His skin sunk into his face. His eyes were shadowed.  
  
He looked like a corpse.  
  
He remembered how James had looked in the wreckage thirteen years before. So much had changed so quickly: the stiffened relaxing of his muscles, the tint of his skin, the unseeing eyes.  
  
It was almost Halloween.  
  
Sirius would drink from now until Halloween and when Halloween was over maybe he would try living again.  
  
James couldn't try living again.  
  
Why on earth hadn't Sirius died then?  
  
 _I'm too obvious. Make Peter the secret-keeper. No one would suspect him. The greatest pranksters in history pulling a prank on the Dark Lord himself!_  
  
He lined up the bottles of fire whiskey on the kitchen table. The kitchen was in the back of the house, and that was good because he wanted to stare at the Shrieking Shack.  
  
He didn't see the Shrieking Shack.  
  
He saw the house in Godric's Hollow.  
  
He saw it in happiness and he saw it in ruins and he felt a maddening urge to claw at himself like Moony had done in the days before Wolfsbane Potion or Animagus best mates.  
  
If Remus had had a chance to play with time, why hadn't he chosen to save James and Lily instead of Sirius?  
  
Remus hadn't even liked Sirius as much as he'd liked James. They'd all three of them, Peter and Remus and Sirius, liked James best. But James had liked Sirius best and that was the only time Sirius had ever been chosen. His parents had liked Regulus best because Regulus had been compliant. And while there had never been a shortage of women who admired his accident-of-genetics pureblood looks, no woman had ever loved him like Lily had loved James or like Remus' secret not-wife apparently loved Remus. The child he should have raised had grown up without him. The few people he cared about had other priorities, and he didn't blame them, because he wasn't any use anymore.  
  
No one had protected him from the dementors.  
  
Well, there had been that one night when Prongs had risen from the dead to save him one more time. The bit of Prongs that lived in Harry…  
  
"I am so sorry," he told the empty room.  
  
The room didn't answer."I want to die," he told the empty room.  
  
The room didn't answer that, either, probably because it was such a stupid thing to want when James and Lily weren't there and someone had to put Harry first because Remus, bless him, didn't quite have the mindset to do it because he was so indebted to Dumbledore, the old fool, who had told the Wizengamot that Sirius was the secret-keeper in the first place.  
  
He drank.  
  
Somehow he would make it through Halloween.

_**To be continued** _


	19. The Goblet of Fire 3

For once, the full moons began falling at comparatively convenient times. Remus considered himself lucky and got on with it.

Snape provided the Wolfsbane Potion without comment and rarely so much as grunted in reply to Remus' thanks.

The transformation hurt. He missed a day of classes. Mad-Eye taught in his stead, glad to have any opportunity to sweep through the castle before Karkaroff arrived the day before Halloween.

During his day of recovery in mid-October, Remus received a get-well note from Harry, Ron, and Hermione, as well as owls from Sirius and Lyall. He hadn't paid enough attention to any of them, Remus scolded himself. He'd been busy with the demands of teaching and preoccupied with thoughts of seeing Dora again, but that was no excuse.

On October 30, the delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang arrived with much fanfare. Perhaps reacquainting himself with Mad-Eye had altered his perceptions, but Karkaroff seemed rather too boisterous and comfortable for Remus' liking. He watched Karkaroff carefully. Just because Karkaroff had fled Voldemort and been murdered by his former comrades in the original timeline didn't mean that it would happen again.

Constant vigilance, after all.

Remus wished Mad-Eye could have attended the Welcoming Feast. Coming face to face with the man who'd thrown him in Azkaban (briefly as that had lasted) would have silenced Karkaroff's presumptuous laugh.

The Goblet of Fire flickered menacingly, and Remus had to make an effort to hide his distaste even as he never let the Goblet or Karkaroff out of his sight.

After a long, dull evening, Karkaroff finally turned to lead his students from the Great Hall. Remus tensed as he noticed that Karkaroff was likely to cross paths with Harry and his friends. He rushed toward them and arrived just as Karkaroff noticed the scar on Harry's forehead. The Durmstrang students followed their headmaster's gaze and stood gawking at Harry, too. Some of them were openly whispering and pointing by the time Remus made it to Karkaroff's side.  
  
"Yes, that is Harry Potter," he said pleasantly. "We prefer not to treat him as an animal in a zoo, however, so unless you were going to invite him to practice his Wronski Feints with Mr. Krum…"

Karkaroff muttered something unintelligible and swept his students outside.

Remus pulled Harry out of the main corridor; Ron and Hermione, of course, followed.

"You do know Karkaroff was a Death Eater?" Remus asked when they were alone.  
  
"Yeah," said Harry. "Sirius says everyone in Azkaban hates him because he put half of them there when he got caught."  
  
"Good. I don't think he would try anything with you, Harry, because from what I know he's a coward in the mode of Peter Pettigrew." Harry scowled. "That said, I don't want you wandering off alone with him or any of his students."

"It's not the students' fault their headmaster was a Death Eater!" objected Ron, presumably in defense of his Quidditch idol.

"And I wasn't wandering anywhere. They came up to me. I wasn't alone. I was about as un-alone as I could get!" Harry added.

"I know that," said Remus. "You're both right. I have every reason to believe that Viktor Krum is an upstanding young man, but he currently takes his directions from a headmaster who is anything but." He glanced around again and cast an anti-eavesdropping charm that made Hermione raise an eyebrow. "Igor Karkaroff is one of the reasons that you have Aurors sitting in on your Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons this year. Mad-Eye Moody is the one who put him in Azkaban in the first place. When I saw him gawking at you, Harry, I wanted him to know that he is being watched. I'm not criticizing you at all."

Harry shrugged.

"All right then," said Remus. "Back to your dormitory. You have to get ready for another feast tomorrow."

They went, and Remus returned to the Great Hall, where the crowds had thinned out considerably. The Goblet of Fire had not yet been left unattended, but almost 24 hours remained for students to submit their names. Percy Weasley, only a year removed from his turn as Hogwarts Head Boy, stood nearby in contemplation.

"Hello, Percy," Remus greeted him.

"Hello, Professor." Percy barely tore his eyes from the Goblet.  
  
"Will you be the Ministry representative for the rest of the Tournament?" That would be interesting. Remus would have expected a more senior employee to make a lateral movement into Barty Crouch's position.

"I don't think so," said Percy petulantly. "Although I do know more about the plans for the Tournament than almost anyone else. Mr. Crouch was… what Mr. Crouch did was wrong, but he still worked very hard to make the Tournament possible. He's the one who speaks all the languages and understands all of the customs from all of the countries and knows how to negotiate so that Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were willing to come here."

"I don't doubt it," Remus agreed. He evaluated Percy carefully as they both stared at the Goblet. Percy had been the only member of the Weasley family to eschew the Order in the future-past, but perhaps removing Barty Crouch from the equation would benefit him as well as Harry. "People are complicated," Remus added when he was sure that Percy was still listening. "The same man can strive to serve the world in one way but bend the rules in another way at the very same time." Remus, for example, had a habit of violating half a dozen anti-werewolf regulations by waking up in the morning.

"It shouldn't have to be complicated," Percy replied, still staring at the flames. "There are rules and you follow them. If you do everything right, you'll be successful." For the first time, he turned and truly looked at Remus. "You're a professor, you should know that."

"Well," said Remus, wondering if Dora would laugh and call him overly modest again if she were here, "I haven't been a professor for very long so I can't say for certain how things should be done. I can tell you that I wouldn't give the same punishment to a third year who refused to face the boggart because she was afraid that I would give to a third year who refused to face a boggart because he didn't believe that he should have to attend Defense classes at all. It's the exact same infraction of the rules, and yet both students are in danger of not being as successful as they might be for completely different reasons."

"Either one of them could have followed the rules. Being afraid is no better excuse than any other. I'm sure Mr. Crouch was afraid of what would happen to his son. Do you believe that what Mr. Crouch did was acceptable?"

"No," said Remus shortly. "No more than I believe what Peter Pettigrew did because he was afraid was acceptable."

He could see that Peter's name landed hard for Percy. The garden rat "Scabbers" had been Percy's pet before he'd been Ron's. "My brothers mentioned that Sirius Black is a friend of yours."  
  
"And?"

"The man who framed him for murder and the man who kept him from having a trial have both been put in Azkaban in the last three months. It's not a coincidence."  
  
"Perhaps not," said Remus mildly. "Perhaps seeing Peter and Sirius again made Mr. Crouch rethink what he'd done in the past, made him take a bigger risk with his son—"

"Made him want to be caught." Remus was almost sure that wasn't true, but he wouldn't tell Percy as much. "But after the people who put him in prison were caught, Sirius Black argued that Azkaban should be more humane, not less."  
  
Sirius is extraordinary, Remus reflected, but he kept that thought, so full of admiration for his old friend, to himself. "Human beings are complicated. Sirius broke many, many rules to escape from Azkaban, but he went through proper channels to remove some of the dementors. His end goal was the same. He wanted to protect people, most especially Harry, but everyone else who might have been in danger from Peter. Sometimes he followed the rules and sometimes he did not. Sometimes he made the right decision, and sometimes he did not. Not so different from your Mr. Crouch in that way."

Remus made a mental note to make sure that Sirius never, ever found out that Remus had compared him to Barty Crouch, if only in the most superficial rumination on human nature.  
  
"He's not my Mr. Crouch," said Percy. "No matter what the twins say." His eyes narrowed. "It's bad enough that Scabbers was my rat."

"You were a very small child when Peter found you, weren't you?" asked Remus.

"I wasn't even six." Percy pursed his lips tightly together. "My father had taken me to Diagon Alley for a treat. I hadn't seen him very much because he'd been working all hours because of You-Know-Who. He stopped to talk to someone. This rat ran right up to me and started jumping around. I begged my father to let me have it for a pet, and he said yes. I'd say I don't understand how he couldn't tell, but I couldn't tell, either, years after I should have wondered at least why he was living so long."

Remus wouldn't have minded hearing more about what Peter had been up to during those long years, but footsteps rang out along the stone floor.

"You see, Dumbledore?" demanded Karakaroff. "Your Defense Against the Arts Professor and your Ministry representative guarding the Goblet."

"I'm certain they were simply talking and lost track of the time," explained Dumbledore with a lightness that left Remus with no doubt that no other explanation was acceptable. "Mr. Percy Weasley was our Head Boy only last year. His professors could hardly help asking after him."  
  
"I expect your professors are quite able ask after him anywhere else in your great castle rather than while monitoring the Goblet of Fire!" Karakaroff objected. 

"Unless you believe the Goblet needs monitoring? Or unless your Professor and your Ministry are not satisfied that your skills are sufficient to allow your age line to function as it should?"

"Professor Lupin? Mr. Weasley? Please take your conversation elsewhere," Dumbledore suggested without offering a word in his own defense.

"I hadn't realized how late it was. I must be going," said Percy hastily, and he rushed toward the front door of the castle.  
  
"And I shall be in my rooms, Headmaster, should you require me," said Remus. He left the room with Dumbledore's pleasant thanks ringing in his ears.

His night, though, was restless.

He would rather have watched the Goblet all night. He should have borrowed Harry's Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map. He considered making use of a good Disillusionment Charm and his knowledge of the castle, and a time or two he even put his hand on his door before pulling himself back. Barty Crouch, Junior, was gone. There was no one in the castle who had the means or the desire to put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire. He had already fixed this problem.  
  
He wouldn't rest easy until after the names had been drawn.  


* * *

  
The next day was busy. The students from all three schools were an excited whirlwind of gossip eager to get into places they didn't belong. (The desire to explore the Forbidden Forest knew no allegiance to any school in particular.)

The feast that evening was interminable, full of small talk and delicious food he had to pretend to enjoy. At long last, Dumbledore waved his wand and extinguished all the candles except those inside the carved pumpkins. The Goblet of Fire glittered blue-white.

A tongue of red flame shot in the air; Dumbledore deftly caught the parchment it had expelled.  
  
"The champion for Durmstrang," he read, "will be Viktor Krum."

Remus applauded with the rest. _That wasn't even a surprise the first time this happened ,_ he thought irritably. Terror settled into his chest. Had he protected James' son, or had he not?

The Goblet flared a second time. "The champion for Beauxbatons," Dumbledore declared, "is Fleur Delacour!" Remus consciously did not clench his teeth as he applauded. Two of Fleur's classmates were sobbing. _Be glad you're out of it,_ he thought. _What a horrible contest this is._

The Goblet turned red again almost before Fleur had been escorted from the Hall. "The Hogwarts champion is Cedric Diggory!"

There was a roar of approval, and Remus slumped into his chair with relief.

The Goblet of Fire had blinked out. It would not ignite again until the next tournament.

Three schools. Three champions. Harry was sitting with his usual cluster of friends at the Gryffindor table, heads together, no doubt lamenting that Angelina Johnson had not been named champion after all.

"Remus?" Professor Sprout looked a pointed question at him, her face glowing with pride for Cedric. "Are you quite all right?"  
  
"Yes," said Remus, temporarily unable to manage another word.  
  
"He's merely sulking because he was hoping to see the Johnson girl named champion," said Snape, always willing to sow dissent where Remus was concerned.

The corners of Professor Sprout's mouth turned down.

"To the contrary, I think Cedric Diggory will be a marvelous champion," said Remus, and he meant it. He turned to look Snape in the eye. "I simply hate Halloween. It's the anniversary of the murder of some friends."

No one had anything to say to that, and in any case Dumbledore was pulling Sprout and Snape away into the room where the champions were gathered.  
  
Remus was struck by the urge to flee the Hall— flee the raucous, celebrating children— free the idea that this was a holiday, not the day that Lily and James had died, and Sirius… Sirius.

For all intents and purposes, this was Sirius' first Halloween since Lily and James' death. The previous year, when he'd broken into the castle while on the run, didn't count. He'd spent most of his time in dog form and hadn't been in a position to think, to mourn, to brood…

With difficulty, Remus made his way down the aisle between the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables until he reached Harry. Harry glanced up at him, blandly curious.  
It was clear that Harry didn't think of Halloween as the day his parents had died. Harry thought of Halloween as a holiday.

And unless he missed his guess, Remus was about to rip that small happiness away from him.  
  
"Harry," he asked, "May I borrow a certain mirror that is in your possession?"

"Yeah, of course," said Harry. "It's upstairs."

"Will you get it for me, please? Now?"

Harry stood; Ron and Hermione stood with him. "Stay and eat dessert," Harry told his friends. He lowered his voice. "Let me know if the Hufflepuffs' heads still fit out the door at the end of the night." Ron snorted appreciatively, and Harry and Remus were off.

"Why do you want to talk to Sirius?" asked Harry when they were more or less alone.

"I expect that today has been a difficult day for him and I'd like to go see him." _Like I should have done weeks ago. _"I want to make sure he's at home."

"What's so special about today?"  
  
It was on the tip of Remus' tongue to prevaricate— to say that the Triwizard Tournament made everyone who'd lived through Voldemort's war nervous— but he stopped himself. Harry would realize the truth sooner or later.

"You know," said Remus quietly, "that your parents were murdered on Halloween."

Harry froze, then flushed.  
  
"I know you don't remember," Remus rushed on. "I know that to you Halloween is a holiday, which is exactly what your parents would want, what Sirius wants—"

"It's not just a holiday! Of course I know when they died!" Harry snapped.

"I'm aware of that. I'm not accusing you of anything." He seemed to be saying that to Harry a lot lately.

"I know," said Harry. They had reached the edge of Gryffindor Tower. Harry gave the password to the Fat Lady ("balderdash") and was back in a moment, still flushed and shouting Sirius' name at the mirror.  
  
"He doesn't answer," said Harry frantically. "He always answers."  
  
Remus took the mirror from Harry's hand and tried calling out to Sirius himself, in the faint hope that Sirius might realize that they were beginning to panic if he heard a voice other than Harry's. There was no response.

"We're going to look for him, right?"

Every school policy demanded that Remus order Harry to return to the feast.

The mutinous look in Harry's green eyes— Lily's green eyes— told Remus that there was no chance whatsoever that Harry would do so. There was enforcing a school policy, and then there was setting a student up to fail.  
  
"Do you have your invisibility cloak?" he asked.

Harry pulled it out from the pocket of his robes.

"If Professor McGonagall says you can come, you can come," he conceded.

They found Professor McGonagall in the Great Hall, ushering students in the directions of their dormitories. "The feast is over," she was saying. "You can continue these discussions in your common rooms."

A quick word, a quick nod, and Harry and Remus were out the door.

They walked so swiftly along the road to Hogsmeade that they hardly had breath to speak, although Harry called Sirius' name into the mirror every few minutes.  
  
"We should have flown," said Harry as they reached the hill that led to Sirius' house.

"We'll Apparate from here," Remus decided, and Harry extended his arm automatically.  
  
They appeared with a pop at Sirius' front door and flung it open— it had been left completely unlocked— without asking permission.

" _Padfoot_?" Remus shouted.

There was no answer.

"You look downstairs, I'll look upstairs," Remus decided. He jumped up the stairs two at a time to discover… nothing. Far too much nothing. It looked as if Sirius hadn't slept in his bed for a month.  
  
"Professor?" Harry called. "This is bad."

Remus' heart leapt into his throat. _Sirius is dead. All of that, and he died anyway._  
  
No.  
  
Harry would have screamed his heart out if he'd found Sirius' corpse.

Remus knew what it was like when Harry watched Sirius die.

He jumped back down the stairs and followed Harry's voice to the kitchen in the back of the house. What looked like an entire case of fire whiskey had been lined up on the table. A few of the bottles were full. Most were empty.

Sirius' mirror lay beside them.

Remus closed his eyes for a long, painful moment.

He should never have left Sirius to his own devices, especially not so close to Halloween.

"I don't think he'll be at the Three Broomsticks or the Hog's Head, especially tonight, but we'd better check," he decided.

"Should we split up?"

"Absolutely not." Under no circumstances was the Boy Who Lived walking unaccompanied into a pub on Halloween. Possibly Harry was never going to be allowed to go anywhere on his own ever again, and neither was Sirius. He'd have a hard time explaining to Dora why she should join them, but he'd think of something.

He Apparated them the short distance to the Three Broomsticks. The building shook with music and laughter.

He _hated_ Halloween.  
  
"Harry Potter!" roared someone inside.  
  
 _"Harry Potter!"_ the crowd roared back.  
  
 _"Raise a glass to the Boy Who Lived!"_

Beside Remus, Harry's mouth had fallen open. "Is it like this here every Halloween?" he asked faintly.

"It's like this everywhere in Britain every Halloween," said Remus.  
  
Oh, how he hated Halloween.  
  
Without comment, Harry covered himself with his invisibility cloak and latched onto the edge of Remus' robe to keep himself close.

Remus could barely move inside the densely packed Pub, and he could feel Harry slamming invisibly into someone every few feet. The crowd was so drunk, and so happy, and so tightly pushed together that no one seemed to find the bumps suspicious.

At long last, they reached Rosmerta. She smiled warmly. "Have you seen Sirius?" he asked without preamble.

"Not for a few days." Her brow wrinkled in thought. "More like a week. I was starting to get worried about him. He was starting to go kind of quiet, and that's not like him."

It was more like Sirius than Rosmerta knew, but no less worrisome for that. Remus thanked her and, grabbing hold of Harry, Disapparated on the spot.

They landed outside the Hog's Head. "Still in one piece?" he asked Harry.  
  
Harry tore the Cloak from his face. "Yeah."

"Then cover up again. They'll be less celebratory here, but this is still your day." Harry made a face. "The Ministry nearly renamed Halloween Harry Potter Day when you were two years old. Dumbledore spoke out against it. Said it would give you a swelled head."

Harry's face flamed redder than ever and he covered it with the Cloak once more.

They were able to cross the Hog's Head without slamming into anyone, but only just. A group of grizzled men in hooded cloaks were drinking mead out of dirty glasses three gulps at a time to the chant of "James-Lily-Harry!"  
  
Sirius certainly wasn't here; he would have punched half of the patrons as soon as he'd walked in the door.

"Remus Lupin," came Aberforth's neutral greeting.

"Hello, Aberforth. Has Sirius Black been in here tonight?"

"Not for a week or so." Abertforth tossed another dirty glass of mead at a patron. "And if you're concerned about your friend, you ought to be."  
  
Remus grimaced. "Thank you."

He strode back out the door and Harry followed.

The chant of _James-Lily-Harry _trailed after them into the moonlight.

"Now where?" asked Harry. "Your cottage in Yorkshire?"

"I have a few more guesses before we try that. Hold on. We're going to make a long jump. All the way to London."

He supposed that Sirius wouldn't want Harry to see Grimmauld Place for the first time this way, but if Sirius was going to disappear and terrify them, Sirius could give up his vote.

Harry looked up at the house in awe.  
  
"It's not safe," said Remus unnecessarily. "We'll have to search it all. Stay close to me."

"Where are we?"

"This was Sirius' family's house. He ran away when he was just a little bit older than you."  
  
"I know. He told me."

"Then he also told you what sort of wizards his parents were?"

"Yeah."  
  
That made things easier. "Wand out, please. Be ready with a knockback jinx."

They had searched most of the house— and Harry had chuckled appreciatively over the decorations in Sirius' childhood bedroom— when a crack announced Kreacher's arrival.  
  
"It's the werewolf, bringing a brat into my Mistress's house," Kreacher intoned. His eyes flicked to Harry's forehead just as Karkaroff's had the day before. "Kreacher can see the scar, it must be true, the boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how he did it, how it would torment my poor Mistress to see him here, how she would cry—"

"We'll be out of your way if we can find Sirius," Remus told Kreacher.  
  
"It speaks to me like an equal, the filthy werewolf does. The Master is not here."

"Do you know where he is?"

"Kreacher would not know unless the Master called for him, and the Master would not dare call for Kreacher, not on Halloween, not on the day that boy stopped the Dark Lord."

"All right. Thank you, Kreacher."  
  
"Master is an ungrateful blood traitor swine and his friends are slime."

"Very well, Kreacher," Remus agreed, unbothered by the house-elf's commentary. He was now almost sure that he knew where Sirius was. Deep down, he had known all along. "Harry," said Remus quietly. "Have you ever been to see your parents' graves?"

Harry shook his head.

"I thought not. We should have taken you last summer. I don't think you ought to go there for the first time on Halloween—"

"I am not going anywhere else," said Harry in a voice that dared Remus to treat him as anything but an equal.

"Then put on your cloak and hold on."

  
Harry put on his cloak and held on.

* * *

  
There were fireworks in the sky over Godric's Hollow when Harry and Remus appeared. The air was filled with the scent of sweets and chips and grilled sausages. Someone was selling hats reading "Godric's Hollow— October 31, 1981." Behind the words was a silhouette of a man, a woman, and a baby. The man and the baby both had discernibly messy hair.

Hogsmeade had been a party; Godric's Hollow was a festival.  
  
"You need to come to Godric's Hollow on Halloween at least once in your life," one young witch was saying to another.

"I can't believe this was where it happened! When it happened!" squealed the second witch. "Right there!" And she pointed to the ruins of what had once been James and Lily's home.

Harry stumbled beside Remus. Remus dropped his arm around Harry's invisible shoulder and hoped that it was enough.

"Do you want to stay and look?" Remus whispered.

"I've seen enough," Harry whispered back, his voice croaky.

"We're going to walk toward the graveyard now," Remus said with a calmness he didn't feel.

"Right," agreed Harry.

There was a line of witches and wizards waiting to kneel before the graves and leave flowers. Sirius was not among them. "Do you want to—" Remus began.

"No!" said Harry emphatically, and Remus quite agreed. He knew Sirius would agree, too, but he was more certain than ever that Sirius was here somewhere.  
  
He and Harry slipped into the shadows at the edge of the graveyard. As they approached the darkest corner, Remus let a ball of blue flames fall into his hand.

"Turn that out," a voice growled.

"I don't think I will, Padfoot," said Remus quietly, and Harry let the Cloak fall to the ground beside Sirius.  
  
 ** _To be continued._**


	20. The Church Graveyard

Sirius' head shot up.   
  
"What is Harry doing out of school, Remus?" he asked dangerously.   
  
"Oh, I fancied a Halloween night stroll and my favorite professor was kind enough to indulge me," Harry answered before Remus had a chance.   
  
Remus wasn't sure whether it was fortunate or unfortunate that Harry had chosen this particular moment to sound exactly like James as well as look exactly like James.   
  
Remus also filed away the memory of Harry calling him his favorite anything for future dark times. He didn't care whether Harry was being facetious or not. He would take it either way.   
  
"Why, precisely, did you fancy a Halloween night stroll?" Sirius asked Harry.   
  
Harry pulled the mirror from his robes and thrust it in Sirius' face. "You didn't answer."   
  
Sirius muttered an impressive stream of obscenities under his breath. "I left it on the kitchen table."   
  
"Yes, you did," Remus confirmed.   
  
"You went to my house?"   
  
"Both your houses, in fact," said Remus, deciding to get the little revelation of Harry seeing Grimmauld Place out of the way while Sirius was still feeling abashed. He sank to the ground and settled himself as close to Sirius as he could without actually touching him. Harry, too, sat down on Sirius' other side. "And the Three Broomsticks, and the Hog's Head. This was stop number five."   
  
"So you've seen Grimmauld Place," said Sirius to Harry. "What did you think?"   
  
"I thought…" Harry seemed to be at a loss for words. "I thought you should free the house-elf. He hates you anyway, and nothing should be living there."   
  
Sirius laughed mirthlessly. "Believe me, Harry, I would love to."  
  
"So why not?"   
  
"You're making my head hurt." Remus caught Harry's eye in the brief instant in which they both decided not to tell Sirius exactly why his head hurt. "Moony, why can't I free the house-elf?"  
  
"For one thing, he may know things that could be dangerous if he is free to discuss them with whomever he likes," Remus began. "He knows nothing but serving the Black family. His own ancestors served Sirius' ancestors for generations. The only surviving members of the Black family Kreacher respects— not counting the one in Azkaban, of course— are Narcissa and Draco Malfoy. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that less than two years have passed since Lucius Malfoy planted a dark object on Ginny Weasley that nearly killed her."   
  
"And Hermione," said Harry softly. "And other people, too."   
  
"Quite right. If an object like that was in Grimmauld Place, and Kreacher knew its worth, he might pass it to Narcissa and her family to use at the opportune moment."  
  
"He also knows Remus is a werewolf," Sirius added roughly. Remus flinched and glanced around, but there was no one in their corner of the graveyard to overhear. "If he were free to share that news with Draco, you'd be out your favorite professor faster than you could say 'wolfsbane.'"   
  
Harry's face tightened in thought. "It still doesn't seem right."  
  
"It's not right," said Sirius quickly. "It's not right, but it's all he knows and he's very old now. He's been with my family since I was younger than you. He can't wrap his mind around being free. He wouldn't know what to do with himself. It would be like… like telling a unicorn to live in King's Cross station. The environment would be so foreign that the shock would probably kill him."   
  
"Dobby wanted to be free."  
  
"Dobby is unusual. There might be a unicorn out there that wants to live in a train station, but there's probably not many."  
  
"Then could you at least send Kreacher to work at Hogwarts instead of living in that house all by himself?" asked Harry. "You could still order him not to say anything that you don't want him to say, but he'd be around other house-elves and there'd be fresh food and sunlight and stuff."   
  
Sirius and Remus turned to stare at one another.   
  
"We really should have thought of that," said Remus.   
  
"Yes, Harry," said Sirius with something almost like a smile. "If Dumbledore doesn't mind, Kreacher can work at Hogwarts. I'll have to order him not to poison any of the students' food, of course…"   
  
"Maybe he can do the cleaning instead," Harry proposed.  
  
"Oh, he's a good cook when he's motivated. I don't imagine he'll be motivated, but… well, perhaps you'd best be the one to ask Dumbledore."   
  
"All right," said Harry. "'Course, Hermione won't like that. She thinks all house-elves should be free whether they want it or not."   
  
"Hermione might change her mind if she met a few more house-elves," said Sirius darkly. "Kreacher, in particular."   
  
"It's hard to change Hermione's mind about anything."  
  
Another round of fireworks sparkled across the sky, and the three of them lapsed into silence.   
  
"Is it always like this?" asked Sirius as they watched.   
  
"It used to be worse," Remus admitted, his stomach clenching with grief at the memory. "It was inescapable the first few years. You could hide yourself in a cave in the woods and you'd still hear the celebrations if you knew what to listen for. Believe me, I tried."   
  
"They really wanted to rename it Harry Potter Day?" Harry asked, clearly hoping that he'd heard wrong earlier that night.   
  
"They did." Remus nodded. "So never say Dumbledore didn't do anything for you, Harry, he did at least stop that. He's also the reason that Halloween at Hogwarts is celebrated more as Halloween and less as the day Lord Voldemort fell. I daresay it helps that very few of the students left in the school remember anything at all about the time when Voldemort was at the height of his powers."   
  
Sirius looked to Harry for confirmation. "It's not like this at Hogwarts?"   
  
"No. I mean, the feast is the best one all year and usually weird things happen, but that's it."   
  
"What kind of weird things?"   
  
"Well, last year this nutter broke into our dormitory with a knife and tried to kill Ron's pet rat."   
  
Sirius cuffed Harry lightly around the head, and Remus let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He felt, somehow, that they were through the worst of the night now.   
  
"Then we spent the rest of the night in sleeping bags in the Great Hall. It was fun," Harry continued. "Not as much fun as my first year, though. That was when Professor Quirrell let the troll into the castle, and it almost killed Hermione in the girls' toilet, but then it didn't and that's how we became friends."   
  
"Lovely," said Sirius. "What about your second year?"  
  
"That was the year…" Harry suddenly looked sad. "That was the year the basilisk petrified Mrs. Norris and people started to think I was the Heir of Slytherin. We were right there when it happened because we skipped the feast to go to Nearly Headless Nick's 500th Death Day party." He lowered his head. "You're right. I didn't even think about it. When Nick said there was a party, I just wanted to make him happy. He'd just gotten me out of trouble with Flich, so I owed him, and of course Hermione thought it would be fascinating. She kept telling me I had to go because I promised, when I really wanted to go to the feast instead. I never even thought that it was my parents' death day too. That should have been the first thing I said— that I wasn't going to celebrate someone else's death on the day my parents died saving me."   
  
"That isn't—" Remus began, but Sirius was louder and faster.  
  
"You did exactly the right thing, Harry. You wanted to make someone happy. You sitting around brooding like I am wouldn't have achieved anything."   
  
"Grief isn't linear," Remus added. "You can have a day, or a week, or a month where you're fine, and then it hits you just like someone hexed you with it." He directed himself to Harry, but he hoped Sirius was listening. "Anniversaries, birthdays, death days, are hard for many people, but not for everyone, and especially not for someone who doesn't remember the people he's mourning."   
  
"When were their birthdays?" asked Harry hollowly.   
  
"January 30 for your mum, and March 27 for your dad," said Sirius. He stared toward the gravestone, now covered with flowers. Remus, too, could see the birth and death dates a scant 21 years apart in his mind's eye. Harry was closer to his parents' ages at death already than Remus and Sirius would ever be again.   
  
"And what about your birthday?"   
  
Sirius froze.   
  
"November 3," Remus filled in.  
  
Sirius had been the eldest of their quartet in school, only a few months younger than some students a year above them.   
  
Sirius had almost certainly spent his twenty-second birthday curled in a fetal position sobbing on the stone floor of Azkaban, having arrived there a day or two before.   
  
"I was hoping you hadn't remembered that."  
  
"That's Wednesday!" said Harry. "We have to—"   
  
"We have to do absolutely nothing. It's too close to Halloween, and I am not celebrating it ever again. Besides," he said, trying to make himself sound light and failing miserably, "there's such a thing as getting to be old enough and not wanting to be any older."   
  
Harry rolled his eyes. The blue ball of flame glinted off of his glasses, and for what felt like the thousandth time that day, Remus remembered James.  
  
"Do you remember, Padfoot, that year that Easter was very early— March— and all four of us went to Potter Manor for the holiday? The holiday overlapped with James' birthday, so of course there was a giant chocolate cake sitting on the table waiting for him as soon as we walked in. But my birthday had just passed, and the Potters decided that it wouldn't be fair not to celebrate for me, too, so there was a vanilla cake with my name on it. And I suppose they decided not to stop there, so your cake was, I think some kind of lemon coconut thing, and said 'Happy One-Third-Birthday Sirius,' and Peter's birthday was late in the summer, so his was strawberry and said 'Happy Half-Birthday Peter.'"   
  
"So?" asked Sirius.  
  
"From now on your birthday is May 3."   
  
"I'm not celebrating my half-birthday, either."  
  
Remus sighed theatrically. "As your older, wiser, more mature friend, I'm afraid that you are."   
  
"You are none of those things," said Sirius, apparently too tired to contemplate whether Remus' five years of ill-gained knowledge actually _did_ make him older than Sirius.   
  
"Do start considering a guest list."   
  
"Fuck you." The words had no bite to them. The tension that had been radiating from Sirius when they'd arrived had leeched away. It had left in its wake an exhausted sadness that was just as worrying, but far more manageable.   
  
"Are you ready to go home?"  
  
Sirius stood up, and Remus and Harry followed suit. Remus let the ball of flames blink out as he reached for Harry's arm. Sirius' wand was in his hand; Remus decided not to argue that Sirius shouldn't apparate himself. He'd been on the other side of that argument too many times the morning after a full moon, and had often ended up the recipient of a shouted lecture from James or Sirius about how _just because you can, doesn't mean you should._   
  
Sometimes it was important to remind yourself that you could.

* * *

  
Upon reaching Sirius' cottage, Remus cast a spell around the living room to keep out any shouts that might travel up the hill from the Three Broomsticks. He suggested that Harry tell Sirius all about the Goblet of Fire and then marched into the kitchen to dispose of Sirius' remaining fire whiskey. Sirius would be able to buy more, but there was no reason to make it any more accessible than necessary.  
  
By the time he returned to the living room, Harry had dozed off, nestled in the plush cushions of the sofa. Sirius looked almost peaceful as he watched the rise and fall of Harry's chest, and Remus hated to ruin the moment.   
  
He did it anyway.   
  
"Upstairs, Padfoot," he whispered, pointing with his wand.  
  
Sirius didn't argue, and Remus wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.   
  
"When was the last time you slept?" Remus asked as he glanced around the bedroom.   
  
"Like a normal person? A few weeks."   
  
"We'll get you a dreamless sleep potion."   
  
"No. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances."   
  
"Not forever. Just for a few days so your body can get used to sleeping at night again."   
  
"I spent twelve years having my mind directed by magic that wasn't my own. I'm not doing it now. Not for a few days, not for one day."  
  
Sirius had made essentially the same argument in the first timeline, back when he'd been stuck in Grimmauld Place. Remus decided to accept defeat as the better part of valor. "What about Occlumency? There's some theory that if you —"  
  
"You know that that's not an option."   
  
"Why not?"  
  
Sirius looked at Remus as if Remus were a very stupid child. It was the same disdainful look he'd usually saved for Peter when they'd been in school. "How does one practice Occlumency, Remus?" Remus was silent. Anything he said right now would make Sirius more angry. "I see you're pretending not to know. You let a Legilimens attack your mind so you can practice keeping control over your own thoughts. Let's pretend for the sake of argument that there's nothing about my childhood or my time in Azkaban that I don't mind exposing to this hypothetical tutor. And let's pretend that I was somehow able to remove everything I know about little things like time travel and Horcruxes. Let's pretend that that wouldn't leave my mind so blank that I wouldn't be able to function at all. If all that were true, you know what's still so ingrained in most of my memories of school and of this last six months that I couldn't remove it if I tried?"   
  
"What?" asked Remus weakly.  
  
Sirius hit him on the forehead with the heel of his hand— hard enough to sting, but not really hurt. "My dear friend the Hogwarts professor is a werewolf."  
Sirius was right. Remus was an idiot. "It would be worth it if—"   
  
"No, it wouldn't be worth it, because you need to be there, where Harry is. Especially because we've made absolutely no progress with those Horcruxes. We can guess that if he made more than one, he would have made either two or six because three and seven are more powerful numbers. We can guess, based on what you know about what Harry did in your memories, that there's one in my cousin's vault in Gringotts and there's one somewhere in Hogwarts. That's not enough to go on. We know that that diary that Harry destroyed two years ago was probably one, and if it was that means six and not two, and we're basically looking at an insurmountable problem."  
  
"Harry was able to do it somehow."   
  
"And it's entirely possible that these changes you've made— we've made— will make it impossible for anyone to do it a second time. Which makes it all the more important that you stay at Hogwarts for as long as you can before anyone who objects finds out about your furry little problem."  
  
The outlook certainly seemed bleak when Sirius put it that way.   
  
Remus raised his wand. Sirius knew him well enough to recognize it as a gesture of submission rather than aggression and didn't move. "Do you want me to clean those clothes before you take them off, or after? You can't go to Hogwarts in the morning smelling like a brewery."   
  
Sirius stripped himself naked with a characteristic lack of modesty. Remus ignored the pile of discarded clothing and hit Sirius with a scrubbing spell instead.  
  
"Could've warned me," muttered Sirius, but he didn't otherwise object. When Sirius was clean, he turned to pull fresh clothes out of the wardrobe. Remus couldn't help staring at him. Sirius had lost some of the weight he'd gained back over the summer. He'd obviously given up food as well as sleep.   
  
"Like what you see?" Sirius drawled when he felt Remus' gaze upon him. He sidled up to Remus, half-dressed, and ran a mocking hand along Remus' jawline. "Won't your secret wife be jealous? Or is it that I remind you of her?"   
  
"Yes," Remus deadpanned. "The cheekbones, the shape of the eyes… you're both so pretty."   
  
Sirius laughed, and it was a real laugh that made everything seem a little less bleak.   
  
Remus wasn't sure whether or not he was looking forward to the day that Sirius realized that Remus hadn't been joking. The Black genes were strong. All of the Black progeny, even the disowned rebels, were the beneficiaries of great good looks. The resemblance between Dora and Sirius wasn't striking, but it was noticeable. Anyone could tell at a glance that Sirius and his cousins were closely related, and Dora favored her mother just enough…   
  
It was weird. Remus decided to stop thinking about it and clean up Sirius' clothes like he'd promised.   
  


* * *

  
The three of them walked back to Hogwarts long before sunrise, Harry alternately yawning and complaining that they'd allowed him to fall asleep.   
  
The castle was quiet when they entered, and they made the long trek to Dumbledore's office without interruption.   
  
Remus decided to knock on the Headmaster's door rather than allow Harry and Sirius to try to guess the password. Dumbledore answered immediately.  
  
"To what do I owe this very early morning pleasure?" he asked.   
  
"We have a problem, and Harry believes that you can offer us a solution."  
  
"By all means." Dumbledore gestured that they should enter. Harry looked around with interest, and indeed there were no shortage of interesting things to examine; Sirius looked around with distaste, no doubt remembering the last time he had been there.   
  
"Sirius has a house-elf who lives in his family's horrible house, and Sirius doesn't want to free him because he thinks the shock would kill him and besides he knows dangerous things and he might go to the Malfoys and tell them. Right? So I hoped he could come here," asked Harry all in one breath.   
  
"Really, Sirius," interrupted a voice from the wall. "I'm sure you can handle the family servants without requesting help from a child and Headmaster Dumbledore."  
Harry sat up straighter and swiveled his head toward the portrait who had spoken.   
  
"That's Phineas Nigellus Black," Sirius explained in response to the unanswered question. "Least popular Headmaster in Hogwarts history. He doubtless thinks I should just cut Kreacher's head off, and I must admit that I've been tempted."  
  
Harry flinched. "Cut off his head?"   
  
"Family tradition," said Sirius. "Didn't you notice the heads hanging on the wall when you visited my ancestral home?"   
  
"I was too busy trying to keep the doxies from attacking me," said Harry.   
  
Sirius turned to Dumbledore. "No sentient being should be living in that house, and as Kreacher despises me and the feeling is mutual—"  
  
"I quite understand," agreed Dumbledore. "Hogwarts has the largest population of house-elves in Britain, and we have found a home for more than a few who found themselves in inauspicious conditions." He smiled at Harry with real affection. "I believe Mr. Potter's friend Dobby has found it to his liking."   
  
"Dobby is here?" asked Harry.   
  
"Indeed. Also another elf you may have met by the name of Winky."   
  
"Mr. Crouch's elf."  
  
"Yes. He freed her at his trial. She was quite distraught, having done her master's bidding to the best of her ability."   
  
"Is she happier? Living here?"   
  
"She is mourning for her old life, which was the only life she knew. I don't doubt that— Kreacher— will mourn as well before he becomes accustomed to Hogwarts, but I think this will be the most humane situation for him. It was wise of you to suggest it, Harry."   
  
Phineas Nigellus made a derisive noise that could just barely be considered a cough.   
  
"Call him, Sirius," said Dumbledore.  
  
Sirius looked at the ceiling, then closed his eyes. "Kreacher!"   
  
The elf, filthy and surly as always, appeared before them. "What is Master wanting?"  
  
"This is your new home," said Sirius. "You will not return to Grimmauld Place without my specific instruction. You will work in the kitchens and as directed with the other elves."  
  
Kreacher looked as if he were about to beat his hands on the floor like a spoiled child having a tantrum.   
  
"You will not," Sirius continued, "ever, under any circumstances, disclose that Professor Lupin is a werewolf. You will not allude to that fact verbally or otherwise."   
  
"No, Master," scowled Kreacher.   
  
"You will clean yourself up and dress appropriately. Replace the loincloth with a standard tea cozy."   
  
"Yes, Master." Kreacher's scowl grew.   
  
Sirius looked at Dumbledore. "Anything else?"   
  
"Ask him to treat the other elves with respect and obey Pitts in particular."   
  
"You will treat the other elves with respect and obey Pitts in particular."   
  
"Yes, Master."   
  
"Who is Pitts?" asked Sirius sharply.   
  
"The head elf. He won't ask anything of Kreacher that Kreacher isn't able to give."   
  
Sirius nodded his assent. "Thank you, Headmaster."  
  
"It is my great pleasure. Now if that is all, I believe that Mr. Potter needs to collect his books before breakfast, and Professor Lupin ought to prepare for his classes as well. Remus, do remember that the faculties of the three schools will be meeting for dinner tonight. Your presence is particularly required as the professor of a core subject."   
  
"Yes, Headmaster."   
  
"And Mr. Black, the last of the Blacks, should put his ancestral home back in order in preparation for raising his own family sooner rather than later. The line must be continued," Phineas Nigellus offered.   
  
Sirius scoffed. "If I ever got married, it would be to a Muggle woman and I would take her surname."  
  
Phineas Nigellus vanished from the portrait without further comment.

* * *

  
When Harry veered off toward Gryffindor tower, Remus pulled Sirius in the direction of the Room of Requirement.   
  
"Pull up the beach again," Sirius suggested, but Remus opened the Room of Hidden Things.   
  
"You said that you thought from my memories of Harry that one of the Horcruxes was hidden in Hogwarts?"  
  
"I'm almost certain."   
  
"Then where better to start looking than this room?"   
  
"We have no idea what we're looking for."   
  
Remus shrugged. "It will be something that has value, either in general or to Voldemort. It will probably feel like Dark magic as soon as you touch it, and certainly if you test it magically."   
  
"Fine," said Sirius, although he didn't sound as if he had any great faith in Remus' plan. Truthfully, Remus didn't have any great faith in his own plan, but he hoped that doing something would help Sirius feel less hopeless.   
  
And then, after barely ten minutes in the room, Sirius found it.   
  
"It's goblin-made," he said with the certainty of someone who had grown up touching little else. "The craftsmanship is exquisite, but it…" he made a disgusted face. "It almost has a pulse."  
  
Remus laid his hand next to Sirius' on the crown's and immediately pulled back, repulsed. "You're right. I don't know exactly what it feels like, but it's not normal."   
  
"Even if it isn't a Horcrux, we should get it out of here."  
  
"Agreed."   
  
"Somehow I don't think Voldemort would be likely to put a part of his soul into a tiara." Sirius twirled it uncomfortably around his fingers. "Not even a goblin-made one. He'd want a knife, or something shaped like a skull—"   
  
"He used a diary," Remus reminded. "And I… we'd have to check and see if there are accounts of what it looked like, but this… it may not be a tiara."   
  
"Get to the point."  
  
"It may be the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw. _That_ would appeal to Voldemort."   
  
"I've never heard of the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw."   
  
"I hadn't until I started teaching, either. Apparently it was Rowena Ravenclaw's prized creation. It would give knowledge to anyone who wore it. Every year before the OWLS, at least one Ravenclaw fifth year ends up in some sort of trouble from trying to find it."   
  
Sirius looked at the diadem with new interest. "We may actually have done it. I'll take it and destroy it either way."   
  
Remus shook his head. "No."   
  
"Why?"   
  
"About eight hours ago Harry and I found you drunk and filthy and sitting alone in the corner of a graveyard—"   
  
"It was Halloween!"  
  
"You're miserable, and I understand why, and I respect your decision not to take a potion so that would at least let you sleep, but I am not letting you walk away with an incredibly dark object so you can slap it on your head in a fit of self-loathing!"   
  
Sirius' mouth twisted into a sneer. "Well, if people prone to fits of self-loathing aren't allowed to have it, that would seem to eliminate y—" Remus wrenched the diadem out of Sirius' grip, and Sirius let it go. "And if I were going to hurt myself with a dark relic, there's any number at Grimmauld Place that would do the job. I could summon Kreacher to fetch me one right now. Though I wouldn't want to interrupt New House-Elf Orientation."   
  
"Just leave it in my office until the next full moon." Remus wheedled. "It's on the eighteenth, and there's an eclipse. You'll come to stay with me then?"   
  
"Of course," said Sirius, softening immediately.   
  
"We'll revisit the matter then."  
  
"And if you're caught with it in the meantime?"   
  
"I'll tell the truth about where we found it and say I was investigating it as part of my job."  
  
"That's not even a lie," said Sirius. "Impressive." He conjured a nondescript bag out of thin air and gestured for Remus to drop the diadem into it.   
  
They walked back to Remus' office and tucked the diadem into a drawer just inside the private rooms. "Password is still six-nine-seven-seven?" asked Sirius.  
"I'll leave it that way at least until next month. And I'll tell you when I change it."   
  
"All right."   
  
It was time for Sirius to go. Remus' long day of classes would begin soon. He didn't want to say goodbye, but Sirius said it for him and left. In his wake was the haunting feeling that Remus had made a terrible decision.  
  
_** To be continued. ** _


	21. The Faculty Dinner

She was not what he was expecting when he walked into his classroom, but then, she had always specialized in being the thing he didn't expect.   
  
Had Halloween disoriented him so completely that he hadn't remembered that today was a Dora day?   
  
From her favorite perch atop his desk, she grinned at his look of befuddlement.   
  
Or, at least, he hoped that she was grinning at his confusion rather than at the fact that he looked older and wearier than usual after a sleepless, stressful night. He would have made more of an effort if he'd expected to see her. He granted that she'd fallen in love with him the first time when he'd dressed in rags and perpetually appeared to have come off worst in a fight. But the first time, he'd been risking his life to support a top secret organization devoted to saving the world from Voldemort. That had to have made him more attractive to her.   
  
"Surprise, Professor!" she said at last.   
  
"Last night was a long night. Why don't you explain?"   
  
"I didn't know professors pulled all-nighters after the Halloween Feast, too! Did you leave the Feast and go right to Hogsmeade to celebrate?"   
  
That was when it hit him.   
  
He'd worried, constantly, that in this strange new world Dora wouldn't fall in love with him and there would be no Teddy.   
  
He'd never thought that in this strange new world, he might not feel drawn to Dora. She was a whole year younger than she'd been when they'd first met, really, and she didn't have an impending war to push her to grow up quickly. The young woman who stood before him wasn't his Dora. She might never be.   
  
He didn't bother snapping at her that Halloween would never be a holiday to him. For all that Sirius was her cousin, it wasn't her fault that she didn't know how Halloween felt to him. And it wouldn't be professional to tell her.  
  
"Why are you here?" he asked tiredly.   
  
She scrambled to her feet. "Mad-Eye got paranoid last night about the Goblet of Fire. He was sure Karkaroff was going to do something. I think he blackmailed Scrimgeour into sending me— Scrimgeour drew the line at letting Mad-Eye come himself."   
  
Remus could picture it. It was, he had to admit, rather amusing.   
  
"And of course Mad-Eye can't morph into an assistant caretaker and spy on your little faculty dinner tonight. I don't need to stay for your class," Dora rushed on. "I just needed to check in so it looks like I have a reason to be here. I don't want to disrupt things for you. Except—"  
  
"Except?"   
  
"Can I just congratulate Cedric Diggory? I knew him a little when he first started school."   
  
"Of course."   
  
He hadn't needed another reminder of how young she was. Closer to Harry's age than his own. She'd missed being at school with Harry by only one year and was still only twenty-one.  
  
James and Lily's grave rose again in his mind's eye.   
  
At eighteen, they'd been in school.  
  
At nineteen, they'd been married.   
  
At twenty, they'd been parents.  
  
At twenty-one, they'd been dead.   
  
"Thank you," Dora was saying. "And I'm sorry for joking about Halloween. I forgot— for a second— that you and the Potters were friends."   
  
All of his irritation melted as quickly as it had come.   
  
"We were. And Halloween tends to be difficult, though I've had time to inure myself to its effects." That, of course, brought the conversation around to the person who hadn't had years to heal. "You mentioned the last time we spoke that you'd seen Sirius several times."   
  
"Not again since then." She looked hard at him, clearly deciding whether to say what she was thinking. "Mum tried to get him to stay that night— we all did— and he wouldn't listen at all. I could have forced him, physically, but I can't imagine that being helpful at the end of the day."   
  
"He was upset?"  
  
"He said he wasn't. But it was the day he made the deal with the Ministry about the dementors, so who wouldn't be upset? He pestered me to duel him, he always does, but this time it was really easy to take him down. It's normally not easy at all. He's out of practice but you can tell he was an exquisite dueler."  
  
_Exquisite_. It wasn't the word he would have chosen, or the word he would have expected Dora to choose, but it fit. "Yes, he was. Will be again, once we find a way to… to get the worst of Azkaban out of him."  
  
She brushed slightly against him, suddenly soft and pretty. "Can I help?"   
  
"If there's anything you can do to make sure your mother keeps inviting him to those family dinners— of course you can't make him come, but promise to duel with him if he does since he at least seems to want to do that— could you?"  
  
"I'll do it. Mum won't need any convincing. She really likes having him around again. I think she didn't realize how much she missed him. She had no family, other than Dad and me, for so long, I guess she forgot about what it's like to have someone who knew you right at the beginning."   
  
"I imagine it would be." He remembered, again, the other Dora, his Dora, his wife, telling him to make more of an effort with his own father. "You're very wise," he told her.   
  
"I'm very nosy. I know Narcissa Malfoy is my aunt, and I know her son goes to school here. I know he's my first cousin, but I've never even seen him."   
  
"We'll switch you onto the fourth year Slytherin class one day if you want. Though Draco has refused to take part in the Imperius lessons so far. He writes the essays instead."  
  
"Are they good essays?"   
  
"They are. He's intelligent." Remus tried, and failed, to think of something else complimentary to say about Draco Malfoy.   
  
"Don't try to find something nice to say about him," said Dora, reading his face. "I'd rather he were a little monster, really. It's simpler that way. My mother's family is horrible, except for us and Sirius. Is that where you were last night? With Sirius? Is that why you were worried?"   
  
Remus nodded. He wouldn't share the details with Dora, but he knew that she could be trusted. "Yes."   
  
"I'm glad he wasn't alone. It's kind of you to want to help him. You and he are very good friends, aren't you?"   
  
"You know how boarding school is. You get assigned to share a dormitory with someone, and all of a sudden you're connected for life."  
  
"But not always the way you and Sirius and James Potter and—"   
  
"And Peter Pettigrew," Remus completed so she wouldn't have to. "Yes, we were unusually close for various reasons. But when I was in school— or even your age— I never would have imagined that if there was one thread of that friendship left by the time we got into our thirties, it would be Sirius and me."   
  
"Why?"   
  
"He and James were each other's best friends, of course. Everyone gravitated to James, and James decided to collect this group of oddballs— or, as I say, we just happened to be in the same dormitory. But once you were James' friend, he valued that above all else. It was a matter of honor for him. Peter seemed most like the type to…" _Peter seemed like the type to hang onto whatever he could get. _"Well, Peter always did frustrate Sirius. Sirius' mind was so quick and he hadn't learned how to be patient with someone whose mind was less so. And Sirius could be daring, and reckless," _and sent Snape to the Whomping Willow, _"and I wasn't comfortable with that and didn't know how to express it. We were not on solid terms when Sirius went to prison. If we had been— if I'd refused to believe that he'd done what he was said to have done—"  
  
"You still couldn't have saved him, considering what the Ministry was at the time," said Dora with conviction.   
  
"Thank you." He hadn't meant to talk about it so much. He couldn't even blame it on his sheer exhaustion. He was used to sleepless nights around the full moon, after all. "So tell me about your school friends. I assume you were the most popular girl in your year, and your potions genius roommate was one of your many friends?"   
  
She snorted with laughter. "Almost right. Penny was the most popular girl in school. She knew everything about everyone. She was everyone's friend unless she thought you were a bully, and then she had nothing to say to you."  
  
Remus decided not to consider whether Dora's friends would have hated his friends if they'd all been in school at the same time. In defense of his age cohort, he imagined that the culture had changed a great deal after the fall of Voldemort. Dora hadn't been in school with a mixture of actual Death Eaters and students who were preparing to die fighting those Death Eaters.  
  
"And you?" he prompted.   
  
"I was… was _oddball_ the term you used? I was a Metamorphmagus with a Muggle-born father and an aunt in Azkaban for sitting at You-Know-Who's right hand. I knew all along that I wanted to be an Auror, and that meant I took my classes seriously, but I never met a practical joke I didn't want to pull. It was hard for me to find my limits. I had good friends, but I made a… a few bad decisions trying to prove how fun-loving I am. And I don't just mean the time my friend Tulip and I blew up half of Zonko's." She laughed. "Tulip was a real rebel, more than I was. My parents loved me and didn't give me that much to rebel against. Tulip's parents loved her, too, but they were strict and she felt like their jobs came first, so Tulip would do anything as long as she thought her parents wouldn't like it. She was fun."  
  
"What happened to her?"   
  
Dora laughed again. "Joined the Ministry and became a clone of her parents the minute she finished school. Still spells her hair red, though. And she's still fun, but she picks her moments now, more than she used to."   
  
There was a knock on the open classroom door before Remus could learn anything more about how Tulip and Dora had managed to blow up half of Zonko's.   
  
"The pride of Hufflepuff!" exclaimed Dora, and she came close to throwing herself upon Cedric Diggory.   
  
Remus quickly realized how ludicrous his flash of jealousy was and packed it away. "The pride of Hogwarts," he corrected. "You're the last student I'd expect to be early for class today."   
  
"I wanted to speak to you, Professor." Dora slipped out of the classroom with a wave and Remus nodded that Cedric should continue. "I know that last year you gave Harry Potter private lessons. Taught him how to cast the Patronus Charm and all. I was wondering if you could give me private lessons this year. Not the Patronus Charm, necessarily, but anything that might help in the Triwizard Tournament."   
  
"I think that could be arranged." He ran the schedules though his head. "Eight o'clock on Thursday evenings?" It was the same time he had used for Harry's lessons the year before, and he remembered with a pang that Harry had asked for the lessons to continue.  
  
"Yes." Cedric smiled. "I'll switch my prefect patrol shifts. Thank you, Sir."   
  
"I'd like to bring Harry into your private lessons sometimes," Remus decided aloud. "I know he's two years younger than you are, but he often finds himself in unusual situations and he has a very real gift for some of the things you'll most likely want to work on."   
  
"So I've heard," said Cedric with an amused scoff. "I like Harry. He's a nice kid."   
  
"Good. Thursday, then."   
  
Before Cedric could take his seat, the other students began swarming into the room, the Hufflepuffs gazing at Cedric with more reverence than usual and asking how he'd gotten away from them. He was the champion, after all, and as such required an honor guard at all times.   
  
Cedric had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.  
  
Angelina Johnson pressed her lips together into a thin line.   
  
The Weasley twins pretended to vomit into their schoolbags.   
  
Remus raised an eyebrow at them and handed them a note to be delivered to Harry, asking that Harry meet him at his office at 8:30 that night.

* * *

  
By the end of his last class, Remus' head ached and his feet seemed to sink into the stone floors of Hogwarts. He wanted nothing more than to skip dinner and go straight to sleep, but there was no chance of that; he was expected in the private dining room off the Great Hall to dine with the staff delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Each headmaster or headmistress had been accompanied by two professors in addition to a dozen students.   
  
He was grateful, at least, for the wardrobe Sirius had forced upon him. Knowing that he was wearing robes that were appropriate to the occasion made the whole thing inherently less stressful, if not less annoying.   
  
Remus suppressed a smile when the first thing he saw upon entering the room was Snape's dour look. Apparently he wasn't the only one who could have thought of more pleasant ways to relax after a long day of teaching students still wound up by the twin excitements of Halloween and the Triwizard selections.   
  
He didn't have long to dwell on his colleague's discomfort, though, as one of the Beauxbatons professors— a slender woman with dark hair and blue eyes— strode toward him as if she had awaited him.   
  
"Professor Lupin," she said. "My name is Félicité Palomer. I teach Defense Against the Dark Arts as well."   
  
"Bonjour," he greeted. "J'espère que vous trouvez votre séjour agréable jusqu'à présent."   
  
She laughed.   
  
"And I apologize for my terrible French," he added. "I haven't used it in years." It was a wonder that he remembered any French at all. He had been very young the year that his family had lived in Seine-et-Marne in the hopes of finding a cure for lyncanthropy there. Even when he'd been truly fluent, his French had sounded as if he had picked it up in a back alley (he had). Sirius, whose French sounded like he'd learned it from a Parisian tutor (he had) had always purported to be jealous.  
  
"I appreciate it," she said, and it was not lost on him that she had chosen to continue in English. "You're the only person who has even attempted to speak French since we've been here. All of our students speak some English, and they're supposed to be practicing, but I think they're overwhelmed at the moment."   
  
"I believe I would be overwhelmed if I suddenly found myself in Beauxbatons," he told her honestly.   
  
"I hope you would find it quite beautiful," she said. "But I did not seek you out to tell you about the fountains and the ice sculptures. Your father is Lyall Lupin, correct?"   
  
"That's correct."   
  
"He gave a guest lecture at Beauxbatons many years ago when I was a student. I had a particular fascination with the more obscure branches of defense, and I never forgot it. His work was extremely useful to me two years ago when… well there was a bit of a tragedy. A very young child had been traveling with her parents by Floo Powder. She misspoke and found herself— well, somewhere she oughtn't have been. If she had stayed still and waited for her parents to find her, all might have been well, but she was frightened and ran off. She was alone with a dementor for several weeks, as far as we could tell. She was barely clinging to life when they finally found her."   
  
Remus felt the blood drain from his face at the story. Dementors were hard enough on adults. A child with no way to defend herself… it was fortunate that she had survived at all.   
  
"I can see you understand the gravity of the situation," Professor Palomer continued. "It took us the best part of a year to get her to the point where she could even speak. I tried everything. I reread your father's work. I looked into Muggle theories. It was a combination that did it in the end, not discounting that the girl had a wonderful family and friends. She is beginning at Beauxbatons this year. I am sorry not to be at the school to teach her, but perhaps it is best that she have a year to establish herself without me."   
  
"Students begin at Beauxbatons at the age of eight, don't they?"   
  
"They do. She was six when she was lost."   
  
The two of them drifted toward the lavishly set table. It was hard to take an interest in coq au vin, bouillabaisse, or gratin dauphinois when he couldn't get the image of a six-year-old having the life sucked from her by a dementor out of his mind.   
  
"Why didn't the dementor kiss her?" Remus asked, even though it was very much not polite dinner conversation.  
  
"We think the dementor wasn't quite well itself. Or that perhaps it was playing with its food." Professor Palomer lifted one of the dumplings meant to represent Durmstrang from a platter, then let it fall off the spoon. It splashed into a tureen of beet soup, leaving an uncomfortable blotch of red on the white tablecloth for just an instant before the tablecloth cleaned itself. "One of many questions I wished to ask you, and your father if you were able to arrange an introduction."   
  
"I'll write to him tonight," Remus agreed. "Will you, in turn, share what you have learned about helping someone who has survived prolonged exposure to dementors?"   
  
"Indeed, although it is rather complicated to discuss over dinner. I haven't shared it publicly because I wanted to protect Marianne's privacy while she is still so young. I hope you won't ever need it."   
  
Remus nodded tightly and took a careful sip of wine. "Have you heard the story of Sirius Black?" he asked at last, perhaps against his better judgment.  
  
"Of course! I'd like to meet him, too."   
  
"He and I have been friends since we were students here." Snape and Karkaroff stopped pretending to eat and listened openly. "I can arrange it. Now," he added before Professor Palomer could even thank him, "tell me, has our kitchen approximated the gratin dauphinois adequately?"   
  
Félicité Palomer was no fool, and was careful to limit their discussion to the quality of the food for the rest of the evening. (She even knew that the dumplings were called koldunai, and the pastries zagareliai, so Remus learned something.)  
  
Remus had hoped for the opportunity to continue their discussion when the dinner concluded, but Madame Maxime summoned her deputies as soon as she rose from the table.   
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an old women cleaning the edges of the room by hand with a rag. The old woman saw him looking and winked. Dora. Had she been there the whole time?   
  
He didn't stay to find out. He had asked Harry to meet him at 8:30 and needed to get back to his office.   
  
He found his office door barricaded not by Harry but by Igor Karkaroff.   
  
"Professor Lupin," growled Karkaroff. "I think it's time you and I had a little chat about what you and your friend Black have been up to."   
  
_** To be continued. ** _


	22. Harry and the Diadem

As soon as dinner was over, Harry sprinted to his dormitory and pulled Sirius' mirror from his trunk. Ron was hard on his heels.

"Sirius Black!" Harry snapped.

Unlike the day before, Sirius answered immediately. "Harry? What's wrong?"  
  
Harry tried to stop himself sighing with relief. He'd asked the twins, more than once, whether Lupin had said anything about why he wanted to see Harry. They'd said no. He'd even asked whether Lupin had seemed upset, but that had just made the twins laugh with delight and ask what Harry had done.

Harry had still worried that something terrible had happened to Sirius and Lupin wanted to tell him in person. It was good to see Sirius again, even after saying goodbye only that morning. Sirius looked pale and a bit tired, but, Harry thought, also a bit healthier than he had.

"Harry?" Sirius prompted. "Are you all right?"

"Why does Lupin want to see me?" Harry demanded, thinking that Sirius would probably be annoyed if Harry said that he was worried about him.  
Sirius looked perplexed, then amused. "I don't know. He didn't mention anything to me. Is there a reason he should want to see you? Have you hexed his classroom lately?"

"Of course not."

"Perhaps you should. He's the Defense professor, he ought to be able to fix it. I think a flock of pink flamingos jinxed to dance circles around him—"

"You really don't know what he wants?"

"Maybe you should start at the beginning of this story."

"That's just it. This story doesn't have a beginning." He held the note up to the mirror so Sirius could see it. "He gave it to Fred and George when they were in his class this morning. All it says is to meet him at 8:30. What could he have to say to me that he couldn't say this morning? Or tomorrow in class? Why send a message through Fred and George?"

"And he wasn't at dinner," Ron added. "Everyone says the professors of core subjects were supposed to eat with the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang professors tonight, but maybe that was some kind of a cover."  
  
"I think the two of you might be looking for excitement where there isn't any," said Sirius, still smiling. The smile made him look almost handsome again; the contrast to the night before was vast. "You're used to tracking down monsters and powerful artifacts and mad escaped prisoners. Now none of that's happening and you're bored."

"If we're bored it's because all of our professors think we have to start preparing for our OWLS now and they're giving us three times as much homework as they used to," said Ron irritably.

"It's like they don't even realize that we don't take them until next year," added Harry.

This time, Sirius outright laughed. "Professors are rather single-minded creatures, aren't they?"

"You aren't going to tell us to do our homework?" asked Ron.  
  
"Would it matter if I did?" asked Sirius.

"You have a very cool godfather," said Ron to Harry. "If any godfather of mine said that, you can bet Mum would make sure he wasn't my godfather for long. 'Course, she's so happy that she thinks Fred and George have given up on opening a joke shop that she might let it go… you know, maybe Lupin didn't send that note at all. It might be Fred and George pranking you."

"Hold it up to the mirror again," said Sirius, and Harry did. "It's his handwriting, but all they'd need is a sample from an essay he'd marked and a trick quill…"  
  
"I'd take your invisibility cloak, just in case," Ron suggested.  
  
"Good idea," Harry agreed, and he stuffed the cloak into his bag.

He said goodbye to Sirius, and to Ron, and headed out to meet Lupin.

He was halfway there when Peeves zoomed around the corner. Harry wasn't in the mood to deal with Peeves— in fact, Harry was never in the mood to deal with Peeves— and he quickly pulled out his invisibility cloak and dropped it over his head. Peeves floated, quiet, listening as Harry passed by, but Harry didn't give himself away.

He was feeling moderately pleased with himself as he turned down the corridor that led to Lupin's office.

He froze almost before he knew why he'd done it.

Lupin and Karkaroff were standing in front of Lupin's door and arguing. At least, Karkaroff was arguing; Lupin was rather calm and collected.

Nonetheless, Harry got a proper grip on his wand just in case Lupin needed help. Lupin and Sirius had told him over and over that Karkaroff was a Death Eater and that Harry shouldn't be alone with him; it stood to reason that Lupin shouldn't be alone with him, either. At the very least, it was better that Lupin not be alone with him whether Lupin thought so or not.

For a fleeting moment, Harry wondered whether Lupin had summoned him because Lupin wanted him to witness this. It would make sense that he hadn't wanted to tell the twins what he wanted with Harry, and it was something that couldn't wait until class the next day.

But then, Lupin hadn't told him to be invisible when he came…

"I'm tired of your skulking around, Lupin," said Karkaroff. "I want to talk to you face to face, like a man."

"I never had any intention of skulking," said Lupin. "I'm not quite sure what you mean."  
  
Karkaroff made a dismissive gesture. "Your mentor Dumbledore taught you well. Most brilliant wizard since Merlin, and he's always perfectly oblivious to anyone's meaning when it suits him."

"I appreciate the compliment," said Lupin with a straight face that Harry found admirable. It reminded him of all those times that he'd had to insult Dudley without Dudley understanding what he'd said. "One always likes to be like Albus Dumbledore in any way possible. Forgive me, though, Durmstrang has its own illustrious heroes."  
  
"This evening, you made a point of telling that woman from Beauxbatons that you and Sirius Black have been a team since you were children. It wasn't her you wanted to tell, was it?"  
  
"Professor Palomer and I were discussing the effects of long-term exposure to dementors. That was how Sirius' name came up."

"And his name just happened to come up two nights ago as well when you were bragging to your Ministry underling. Reminding him about how you and your precious Sirius put Peter Pettigrew and Barty Crouch, Junior, in Azkaban, in case he'd forgotten."

"Peter Pettigrew disguised himself as Percy Weasley's pet rat for many years, and Percy was working under Barty Crouch, Senior, at the Ministry. Percy is barely old enough to remember the end of the war, and he has a limited concept of how things were then. It's understandable that he would want to discuss—"  
  
"He didn't want to discuss anything. You raised the subject, knowing I would hear you, just as you raised the subject with Professor Palomer tonight when I was seated not three feet away from you. As I said, Lupin, stop playing games."  
  
"Neither one of those conversations had anything to with you," said Lupin, and Harry could hear the ring of honest bewilderment in his tone.  
  
"And I suppose it had nothing to do with me when you rushed over to throw yourself between me and Harry Potter the night we arrived." A shiver ran down Harry's spine at the mention of his name.

"No, that had something to do with you allowing your students to gawk at him as if he were a giraffe playing the piano."  
  
That wasn't right, Harry knew. Lupin had told him that he had wanted Karkaroff to know he was being watched. Had he staged those conversations with Percy and the Beauxbatons professor as well?

"If you have a problem with students gawking at their more famous peers, perhaps you should concern yourself with your own. Most of the female students in your school, and some of the male students, have been following Viktor around with their tongues hanging out. I don't know that the boy will be able to take advantage of the offer to take classes with Hogwarts students if it continues."

"I'll stop it if it happens in front of me," said Lupin. "And you are certainly in your rights to send any Hogwarts students who are harassing him to the Headmaster or the Heads of House."

"I'll remember that," said Karkaroff. "And you would do well to remember that I served my time in Azkaban. Your own Ministry cleared me."

"The Ministry let you go because you offered your former comrades up in in your place."

"Nonetheless, it was all handled through the proper channels. If I'm next on your little list of Death Eaters you don't feel have paid acceptably—"

Lupin burst out laughing. " _That's _what you think Sirius and I have been doing?"  
  
"Peter Pettigrew and Barty Crouch undoubtedly agree with me."  
  
"There is no list," said Lupin, as if he were speaking to a frightened first year.

"And why does Dumbledore have Aurors in and out of this castle every day?" demanded Karkaroff. "Mad-Eye Moody, no less. Shouldn't he be retired by now?"

"That sort of Auror never retires," Lupin offered. "As to why they are here, it is because some of the lessons I'm teaching to my older students require expert supervision."

"Can't handle it yourself?"

"I've only been teaching for two years."  
  
"That's quite true," agreed a third voice. Harry jumped; he had been so interested in Lupin and Karkaroff's argument that he hadn't noticed Snape's approach. "Believe me, Karkaroff, if you'd ever seen Lupin teach you'd agree that he needs all the extra supervision he can get."

It was difficult to tell whether Lupin or Karkaroff was more annoyed at Snape's intrusion.

"Lupin," said Snape in a tone that made Harry wish that Lupin and Karkaroff would decide to hex Snape in order to finish their conversation, "I require your presence in my office immediately." He glanced at Karkaroff through half-lidded eyes. "I suggest that you return to your ship."  
  
Karkaroff sent an inscrutable look in Snape's direction before bidding him good evening and turning on his heel. He brushed the edge of Harry's invisibility cloak as he passed by. Harry held his breath, not liking to think of the hours of detention Snape would give him if he were uncovered now, but Karkaroff didn't seem to notice anything.

Snape and Lupin turned in the opposite direction and headed toward the dungeons.

It was now well past the time that Lupin had told Harry to meet him. Harry supposed that he ought to return to Gryffindor Tower; there was no telling how long Snape might insist that Lupin stay in the dungeons. But Harry was more curious than ever about why Lupin had wanted to meet him. And he didn't fancy walking back the way Karkaroff had gone. He wished he'd brought the Marauder's Map with him.

As quietly as he could, he approached Lupin's door. He wrinkled his nose; the air still stank of Karkaroff's fur collar and some sort of incense-scented cologne.  
"Six-nine-seven-seven," he whispered at the door, hoping Lupin hadn't changed the password.

The door unlatched itself and Harry let himself inside. He breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he would wait for Lupin for at least half an hour. He could see a grindylow sitting in a tank awaiting the third years' classes, and Harry smiled at the memory…

It took Harry a few seconds to realize that the door hadn't locked behind him as it should have. With a thud, a fur-lined boot kicked the door open; a blast of magic followed behind the boot. "Thank you, my invisible friend," said Karkaroff's voice. "Let's see what Lupin has in here, shall we?"  
  
Harry's wand was already drawn, but he was encumbered by his bag and the cloak. "Expelliarmus!" he cried, knowing he was about to lose what element of surprise he had left.

Karkaroff blocked the spell with ease and sent a blast of wind in Harry's direction. The cloak and the bag fell to the ground.  
  
"Well, well, well. Harry Potter, of all people," said Karkaroff. "I knew I passed someone when Severus Snape decided to make such a nuisance of himself. I turned back in the hopes of catching an eavesdropper, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect you to let me right into your professor's office." He sneered. "You'll have to forgive me if I gape at you. Your professor thinks you're too delicate to handle such attention, but I think otherwise."  
  
"Lupin could be back at any minute," said Harry. "We should both leave. I won't tell him I've seen you, and you won't tell him you've seen me—"

"A likely plan," said Karkaroff. "You had the password. You're Lupin's favorite boy, Sirius Black's godson. You have permission to be here."  
  
"I don't like Lupin at all," Harry lied quickly. "I have to live with my Muggle relatives in the summer because Lupin told Sirius not to take custody of me even though I'm his godson." It sounded true. For a few days during the summer, he'd even believed it might be true.

"Makes no difference to me," Karkaroff decided. He raised his wand again, but Harry was too fast for him and ducked out of the way of whatever spell Karkaroff had cast. He managed to kick Lupin's desk chair at Karkaroff in the process, causing Karkaroff to lose his balance.

" _Expelliarmus_!" Harry yelled again, and this time it worked. He had Karkaroff's wand in his hand, he could run out the door, he could shout for help and he wouldn't even care if he got detention.

The only problem with that plan was that Karkaroff was between him and the door, and Karkaroff was nearly back on his feet, much bigger and stronger than Harry. There was no other way out of the office.

Well.

There was no other way out of the office into the main hall of the castle. There was the mostly hidden door to Lupin's private quarters. Harry had visited at the end of his third year, and the door was within reach.

Harry threw himself through the door faster than he had ever flown after a golden snitch, but it wasn't quite fast enough. Karkaroff pulled a knife from his boot and threw it at Harry's head. " _Immobulus_!" snapped Harry.

Harry's spell worked on the knife, but it didn't work on Karkaroff, whose hands fastened around Harry's throat.

Harry tried to cast another spell, any spell, even the dancing feet spell would do, but he couldn't get the words out around the crushing pressure on his windpipe. Even if he had been good at wordless magic— why hadn't he practiced more?— his hands were pressed between his body and the wall and he couldn't move his wand more than a few indistinct inches. It was a far cry from the swish and flick they'd been made to practice over and over again as first years.

Spots appeared in front of Harry's vision. His brain no longer wanted to focus on the task at hand. Instead he wondered whether Karkaroff had been right, whether Sirius and Lupin really had been tracking down Death Eaters who had escaped punishment, whether that, more than anything else, was why Sirius hadn't removed him from the Dursleys… whether Sirius was just trying to make sure Harry was as safe as possible…  
  
He would never find out if he let Karkaroff choke him unconscious and ransack Lupin's rooms. (Lupin and Sirius couldn't really have made an actual list of their targets and left it lying around? Could they have?)  
  
Numbly, Harry's fingers let go of the two wands, his and Karkaroff's, but Karkaroff kept choking him. "Don't worry," said Karkaroff. "I don't want the trouble of the Boy Who Lived dying while I'm in the country. I didn't get myself out of Azkaban just to go back. I'll perform a nice little memory charm on you while you're unconscious, and you'll wake up thinking you came into Lupin's office to wait for him and then fell asleep. Lupin will believe it."

Harry was afraid that Lupin would.

With the last of his energy, Harry concentrated hard on the sensations against his back and realized that he was being pushed against a wall of drawers. His numb fingers found a lever that would allow the drawer to his left to slide open. Just inside the drawer was… something. He didn't care what. It was heavy and it was metal and he summoned all of his strength to bring it down on Karkaroff's head as Karkaroff loomed over him.  
  
Karkaroff staggered backwards and Harry swung at him a second time. This time, Karkaroff grabbed for Harry's weapon as it connected with his head. Harry let it go. It was the wands Harry wanted, and they were both on the floor, Harry could get to them and turn and run…

The wands vanished when they were an inch from Harry's hand. He knew, without turning, that Karkaroff had somehow summoned them. He would have to leave his wand behind; worse, he would have to leave the invisibility cloak.

The door slammed shut and locked itself.

Harry wasn't going anywhere, then, but he would still fight Karkaroff as hard as he could. He didn't have to win. He only had to hold on until Lupin returned, or until someone noticed that Karkaroff was in the castle instead of on his ship with his students. Dumbledore didn't like Karkaroff and didn't want him alone inside Hogwarts; that much was clear. Someone would find them.

He turned to face Karkaroff, expecting to be confronted with a nasty sneer and a raised wand.

Instead, he saw Karkaroff wearing some kind of ornate crown (had that been what Harry had used to hit him?) and gazing rapturously into nothing. Karkaroff fairly glowed.

"Yes," Karkaroff whispered to no one. "Yes, of course. Of course."  
  
Harry recognized the expression on Karkaroff's face. It was the same expression Hermione wore when she'd just figured something out thanks to the oldest, dustiest, most obscure book in the library.

Karkaroff no longer appeared to see Harry. The door was locked; could Harry escape out a window? No, he could see that they were locked, too, and he would need a wand to open one. Perhaps Karkaroff was so deep in his trance that he wouldn't notice if Harry took his wand right out of his hand.

Cautiously, with reflexes honed not only by three seasons of Quidditch but by many years of dodging blows from Dudley and Uncle Vernon, Harry took a step closer to Karkaroff. Karkaroff paid him no mind.

"Yes, my lord," Karkaroff murmured. "You are wise, you are right, you are forgiving."  
  
Harry's hand brushed Karkaroff's. He was almost there. He almost had his wand. He would blast through the door, he would—

His scar exploded in pain like he hadn't felt since his first year when he'd confronted what remained of Lord Voldemort. Harry fell to the floor, sweating and clutching his forehead.

"Good," intoned Karkaroff. "I will keep him for you. I will use him for you. Right under Dumbledore's crooked old nose."

Karkaroff set Harry's wand aside and drew his own. He wordlessly cast a body-bind on Harry. Somehow not being able to move, not being able to pound his fist against the throbbing in his head, made the pain all the worse.

Next, Karkaroff gave his wand another wave. An exact duplicate of the crown on his head appeared in his hand. He replaced it in the drawer from which Harry had taken it. "I don't think Lupin and Black will notice a difference, do you?" he asked Harry conversationally. "I don't think they knew exactly what they had." He laughed an arrogant, happy laugh. "I was so silly to think it was me they were after. They were never after me at all. Now, we'd best be out of here before Severus lets Lupin go. I don't know whether he thought he was protecting Lupin or me, but it certainly worked out well, didn't it?"  
  
With a wave of his wand, Karkaroff unlocked the door and put everything in Lupin's office and private rooms to rights. Next, he floated Harry to his feet. Harry's wand and invisibility cloak stowed themselves in Harry's bag; the bag looped itself over Harry's shoulder.

Then there was a feeling like having a cold egg cracked over his head— for an instant, it felt good against his pounding scar— and Harry was something like transparent. So, too, was Karkaroff.  
  
"I never was skilled at disillusionment charms," said Karkaroff. "Who knew there was so much knowledge to be found in a silly crown? Who but the Dark Lord? But off we go."

They left Lupin's office. Harry fought as hard as he could to break the spell that was holding him still and the charm that had made him invisible. He had nearly broken the Imperius Curse on his very first try. Lupin was going to let him try again tomorrow, and he planned to beat it. He was going to beat that, and was going to beat this.

They passed a handful of seventh years. None of them seemed to be remotely aware of Harry's struggles. They were talking about their NEWTs. Harry meanly hoped that they would all get terrible marks if they couldn't even notice the head of a visiting school, wearing an enchanted crown, levitating a paralyzed student down the corridor.

They drew close to the Hufflepuff's common room. Harry saw his classmate Ernie MacMillan and tried again to scream for help. But Ernie was doing the only thing that Ernie ever seemed to do these days: loudly proclaiming the magnificence of Cedric Diggory.  
  
Harry wished Diggory would come out of the common room. As perfect as he apparently was, surely he wouldn't fail to notice Karkaroff.

"I believe the door to the kitchens is right here," whispered Karkaroff. "You got tired of waiting for your professor, you decided to steal a snack on your way back to your dormitory, you sat down to eat, you fell asleep. They'll find you soon enough."

He let Harry drift stiffly to the floor, then pointed his wand once more at Harry's head. "Finite Incantantem! Obliviate!"

And suddenly Harry knew nothing.  


* * *

  
"Is Harry Potter all right, Sir?" squeaked a voice.  
  
Harry opened his eyes. His body felt stiff and sore. His head ached. He had no idea why he was lying on the ground, or even exactly where he was.  
  
He did recognize Dobby's voice. "Hullo, Dobby," he managed. "Dumbledore told me you were working here now."

"And Dobby is getting paid for his work, Harry Potter, Sir! Dumbledore is great and good."

"That's great, Dobby. Yeah, he is." Harry tried to sit up. It hurt. He felt weak and tired and he wished that he could be in his bed.

"Was Harry Potter looking for the kitchens?" asked Dobby. "Harry Potter must tickle the pear on the painting." Dobby pointed. "The door will open."  
  
 _Doors_. Had Harry been worried about doors? It seemed like he had. "Maybe." His throat was dry. "Is there pumpkin juice in the kitchens?"

"Always."  
  
Harry got to his feet, not sure whether Dobby had used magic to help him along, and was escorted into the kitchen.

At any other time, Harry would have been fascinated by the giant, high ceilinged room with five long tables identical to the tables in the Great Hall above. These tables were already set for the next morning's breakfast.

Dobby led Harry to the fire at the far end of the room. Something delicious was brewing in the cauldron over the flames. Harry seated himself by the hearth and accepted a glass of pumpkin juice. He began to feel more like himself as he listened to Dobby talk about his work and the castle and how happy he was. Every so often, other elves approached to offer bits of food to Harry. He accepted a sweet pastry and found it delicious.

"How is Kreacher doing? And Winky?" he asked Dobby.

Dobby' ears drooped. "Winky is sad, Harry Potter. And Kreacher— Kreacher is bad, bad elf!"  
  
"I'm sorry," said Harry. "I thought it would be good for him to come here. I thought he would feel better if he was around other elves."  
  
"Only one day. Kreacher is learning, Dobby hopes."

Only one day. Early that morning, Harry and Lupin and Sirius had walked to school from Hogsmeade after he and Lupin had spent half the night Apparating across England looking for Sirius. Grimmauld Place, his parents' graves, the fireworks… it had all happened so quickly. No wonder Harry was tired and had forgotten where he was going.

That was it. He'd been going to meet Lupin, and he must have gotten sidetracked. Harry grimaced. He would have to wait until tomorrow, now, to find out what 

Lupin wanted.  
  
"Harry Potter is tired," said Dobby. "Is late. Harry Potter must go to his dormitory."

"You're right, Dobby. Thanks."

Harry got to his feet and began the long climb from the basement to the top of Gryffindor tower.

He knew the castle well by now, but he was sure that the walk took longer than it should have. Had the staircases changed on him?

When he finally reached the Fat Lady's portrait, she tut-tutted at him for being late. "Balderdash," he told her, too tired to argue. Besides, she was right. He was late. The changing staircases, the chat with Dobby. The castle was full of unexpected things conspiring to make him wonder where the time had gone.  
  
He collapsed onto his bed and was asleep instantly, barely even hearing Ron's question about what Lupin had wanted.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	23. The Un-Birthday Present

Remus asked Harry to step outside the classroom as soon as the fourth-year Gryffindors arrived. Harry's classmates barely noticed; as expected, they were fascinated with Kingsley and Kingsley was endlessly patient with them.  
  
When Remus and Harry reached a quiet alcove, Remus cast an anti-eavesdropping charm and had opened his mouth to apologize to Harry when Harry blurted out, "I'm sorry, Professor."  
  
That caught Remus by surprise. He almost wondered if Harry had James' blood flowing through his veins after all. The image of a young James confessing to something, anything, when he hadn't been found out, was unthinkable. "What are you apologizing for, Harry?" he asked gently. He noticed, now, that Harry looked exhausted. His skin was pale and his eyes were shadowed. He looked worse than he'd ever looked during his dementor lessons— and he'd looked to be on death's door during those first dementor lessons.  
  
"I didn't meet you yesterday. Fred and George gave me the message, but the stairways— the kitchen— I'm not even sure what happened."

Remus smiled. "I guess things work out in the end, don't they? I was called away by Professor Karakaroff and then Professor Snape, so I wasn't there to meet you."  
  
"Oh." Harry breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
"It's I who should be apologizing to you, Harry. I should have suggested that you go to bed early rather than asking you to come halfway across a drafty castle well into the evening."  
  
"Why did you want to see me?"  
  
"I wanted to reopen the idea of extra lessons."  
  
Harry's gray skin brightened visibly and his tired green eyes lit up. "Really?"  
  
"Really. They won't be entirely private this time. Cedric Diggory, as Hogwarts champion, wanted some extra lessons to help him with the tasks. I thought that working together would benefit both of you. You're younger, but you have some instincts that he doesn't, and of course he's had the opportunity to learn some spells that you haven't. I'll try to mix material that's new to both of you with material that can always benefit from a review. That is, if that's all right with you?"  
  
"It's all right," agreed Harry. "I don't know if Cedric will think it's all right."  
  
"It amazes me." Remus smiled again. "You amaze me, Harry. I would think that after what you saw the night before last, you would understand a little bit more what being the Boy Who Lived means to people who don't know you well enough to forget it."  
  
Now Harry scowled. "I don't want to go to private lessons as the Boy Who Lived."  
  
"Professional hazard of being who you are, I'm afraid. After one or two lessons I'm sure you'll just be Harry. Cedric is a very kind young man, in addition to being clever and talented."  
  
"You sound like a Hufflepuff. That's all they ever say anymore."  
  
"Nothing wrong with a little pride in a classmate's achievements," said Remus mildly. "Speaking of which, do you feel well enough to try to block the Imperius Curse today?"  
  
"Yes!" said Harry frantically, emphatically. "And let me go first this time since you made me go last last time. And try to make me do something stupid so I know it's not my own thoughts."  
  
Remus couldn't hide his amusement. "You'd make a fine teacher, Harry. Very well. You may go first." And he lifted the eavesdropping charm and ushered Harry back into the classroom.  
  
He barely allowed Harry to deposit his books on the chair next to Ron before calling him to the middle of the room. "We're going in reverse order of last time," he informed the rest of the class. "Harry, draw your wand. _Imperio_!"  
  
Remus barely gave Harry time to draw his wand before casting the curse, and he could feel Harry's surprise. He took advantage of those seconds of confusion. _Lie down on the floor._  
  
Harry did.  
  
 _Now, jump to your feet. Do a backflip._  
  
Harry didn't.  
  
He writhed on the floor for a moment, looking like he was in pain— Remus hated this part of the curriculum, as useful as it obviously was— before there was a great wave of magic and the curse rebounded.  
  
Remus stepped back, breathing hard as the connection broke. Kingsley began to applaud; the students followed suit, whooping with joy.  
  
"I did it?" Harry asked.  
  
"You did it," Remus confirmed, extending his hand to pull Harry up from the floor. "Sit down, catch your breath, and tell your classmates what was different this time."  
  
Harry sat down, alight with happiness, but didn't bother catching his breath. "Professor Lupin told me to do a backflip, and I knew that that was a stupid thing to do and I didn't want to do it. That's all."  
  
"It helped you that you knew you were being asked to do something you wouldn't normally do?"  
  
"Yes." Harry nodded. "I thought it would."  
  
Better _I thought it would_ than _I told you so ,_ Remus supposed. "I stand by what I said earlier, Harry. You may have a gift for teaching." He warned the rest of the class that he would make his orders more ridiculous in the future. They nodded eagerly, and though none of them were able to throw off the curse successfully, he thought that they all made a bit of progress. Kingsley agreed that they were all coming along nicely.  
  
It was an unexpectedly satisfying lesson.

* * *

Lyall had answered Remus' request for a meeting with Félicité Palomer by return owl and offered to Apparate to Hogsmeade the next day, and so when classes were over Remus made his way to the Beauxbatons carriage to consult with Professor Palomer.  
  
The carriage doors were closed against the November chill, and Remus knocked, not knowing quite what to expect.  
  
The door opened to reveal none other than Fleur Delacour herself. "Bonjour, Mademoiselle la Championne. Je suis le Professer Lupin d'Hogwarts. Est-ce que le Professor Palomer est là?" I _s Professor Palomer here?_  
  
Fleur looked at him curiously. He was never going to get used to the sensation of standing before someone he knew only to have that person show no sign of recognizing him at all. He and Fleur hadn't been close in the future-past, but they had occasionally worked together as members of the Order. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been asking after Teddy.  
  
 _Teddy_.  
  
Sometimes Remus went a day or two now without thinking of his son.  
  
It was sickening.  
  
He hadn't really gotten to know Teddy, but he missed him, and he didn't want to stop missing him.  
  
"Entrez," said Fleur, after considering the matter. _Come in._ Remus wasn't sure whether she'd decided to let him in because she'd determined that she ought to or because she was tired of letting the cold Scottish air blow into the warm carriage.  
  
"Gardez un oeil sur lui," she commanded two other girls. _Keep an eye on him. _The girls were the ones who had cried when the Goblet hadn't chosen them, Remus notices Fleur disappeared behind an ornate curtain.  
  
The carriage was, unsurprisingly, far larger inside than the exterior would have suggested. Remus had entered into some sort of common room. Everything from the pale blue walls to the tables and chairs to the chandelier drifting magically across the ceiling was heavily accented with gold. Of course, Nicolas Flamel had been the school's most famous student; the gold was to be expected. No doubt it was a product of the Philosopher's Stone itself.  
  
The curtain through which Fleur had vanished seemed to conceal a classroom and a dormitory. No doubt there were other rooms, too."Votre carrosse est très joli." _Your carriage is beautiful. _The girls, who had followed Fleur's instructions to the letter and stared at him with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, didn't answer. Perhaps the carriage was so obviously beautiful that it was offensive to comment upon it.  
  
He was saved from making any other potentially grievous mistakes by the return of Fleur and Professor Palomer.  
  
"Professor Lupin," she said with a smile. "I hope my students have made you as welcome in their home as the Hogwarts students have made them in the castle."  
  
One of the girls muttered something in French that Remus couldn't quite catch. The other girl nearly choked on her laughter; Professor Palomer ordered them both from the room with a rather severe look on her face. The order didn't explicitly include Fleur, who appeared determined to stay.  
  
"I received a letter from my father," Remus said. "He can meet with us in Hogsmeade tomorrow if you would like. If you're available, I can commandeer Sirius' house and you can meet them both at once."  
  
"In the evening, after the lessons?" Professor Palomer nodded. "Oui. Merci." _Yes. Thank you._  
  
"La première tâche est ce mois-ci," Fleur objected. _The first task is this month._ Remus didn't blame her. If he'd been a teenager about to face a deadly task with school pride on the line, he wouldn't have wanted one of his professors to be consorting with the enemy, either. Perhaps he would tell Cedric where he'd been and (some of) why before Cedric heard a twisted version of it thanks to the school's unending churn of gossip.  
  
"On ne va pas discuter du Tournoi des Trois Sorciers," Professor Palomer assured Fleur. "Nous allons discuter des détraqueurs." _We aren't going to discuss the Triwizard Tournament. We're going to discuss dementors._  
  
 _" Marianne,_" said Fleur softly. Her entire bearing changed.  
  
"Professor Lupin's father is the world's leading expert in détraqueurs. Dementors, en anglais. Professor Lupin knows a great deal himself, and he has a friend who was exposed to them for over ten years."  
  
Fleur nodded. "Of course, you should go." When she turned to look at Remus, he saw again the young woman he had once known. "My sister Gabrielle is eight years old. Marianne is her best friend. Gabrielle cried and cried when Marianne was lost. Professor Palomer saved Marianne when no one else could."  
  
"I appreciate the opportunity to consult with her," said Remus truthfully. "Until tomorrow, then."

* * *

  
Remus hastily wrote a note to Lyall confirming their appointment and another to Cedric explaining that he would be discussing dementors (had he even known that the French word was _détraqueurs_?) but nothing more with his Beauxbatons counterpart.

Then it was time to tell Sirius that he would be hosting an after-dinner soiree the next night, which just so happened to be his birthday, and the topic of conversation would be the living hell Sirius had survived for twelve years.  
  
It would take a gentle hand to bring Sirius around. Remus dipped his quill in ink and summoned his owl.  
  


* * *

  
_ Dear Mr. Padfoot, _

_ I have invited my father and a Beauxbatons professor named Félicité Palomer to your house tomorrow after dinner. We're all going to discuss dementors. Try not to be drunk. And take a shower. _

_ Regards, _

_ Mr. Moony _

_ P.S. Did you know that détraqueur is the French word for dementor? _   
  


* * *

  
_ Dear Mr. Moony, _

_ Is this Félicité Palomer person your secret wife? _

_ Oui, je sais qu'un détraqueur est un dementor. _

_ My French is better when I'm drunk, so I don't think I'll take your advice. _

_ I'll be here though. Wouldn't want to miss meeting your future wife or continuing to bask in your father's undying gratitude. It's nice that someone in your family appreciates me properly. _

_ Regards, _

_ Mr. Padfoot _   
  


* * *

  
_ Dear Mr. Padfoot, _

_ Professor Palomer is not now and has never been in any reality my wife, secretly or otherwise. _

_ We are going to speak English. I'm not surprised that your French remains perfect after all these years, but mine does not. It's just as well, because now I don't know precisely what the Beauxbatons girls said to insult me when I was in their carriage today. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Moony _   
  


* * *

  
_ Dear Mr. Moony, _

_ If "Professor Palomer" is not your secret wife, is she pretty? How old? I heard that the entire Beauxbatons delegation is part-veela. _

_ Serves you right that you couldn't understand the French insults. It's your karma for never teaching me to swear in Welsh no matter how many times I asked. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Padfoot _   
  


* * *

  
_ Dear Mr. Padfoot, _

_ Professor Palomer is about ten years older than we are. She was a student at Beauxbatons the year my family lived in Seine-et-Marne. I turned seven that year. _

_ I'll let you decide for yourself how pretty you think she is, but as far as I know the only part-veela in the delegation is the champion, Fleur Delacour. _

_ If you behave yourself, I'll teach you to swear in Welsh. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Moony _   
  


* * *

  
_ Dear Mr. Moony, _

_ You have a deal. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Padfoot _   
  


* * *

  
The next evening, Remus and Professor Palomer ("call me Félicité," she said when Remus greeted her) walked together to Hogsmeade. Félicité carried two bottles of Champagne, apparently from the Beauxbatons stores. Remus carried a cake he had requested from the house-elves. Pitts, the head house-elf, assured him that Kreacher had been nowhere near it.  
  
Lyall met them at the edge of town, and he and Félicité were deep in discussion before they even reached Sirius' house.  
  
As they seated themselves at Sirius' kitchen table, Remus flinched at the memory of the empty fire whiskey bottles that had stood there on Halloween night. Sirius, though, slid effortlessly into the role of gracious host. He conjured Champagne flutes so beautifully that Félicité applauded.  
  
"Your imprisonment didn't affect your ability to perform magic at all?" she asked bluntly.  
  
Remus held his breath. Sirius appeared to be handling the situation with calm grace, but everyone who had ever known Sirius Black knew that his appearances could be deceiving and his moods could shift instantly. Besides, the question was rather invasive.  
  
"Not very much," Sirius answered, apparently not offended. "Some spells I had to practice a few times, and sometimes I don't remember a charm that I might not have forgotten if I hadn't gone twelve years without doing wand magic. And of course my eight-year-old cousin can beat me in a duel now, which is rather embarrassing."  
  
"His cousin is 21 and she's an Auror," Remus clarified for Félicité. Lyall, too, looked as if he might have been wondering whether Sirius had surviving relatives who continued to teach dark magic to their underage children.  
  
Sirius shrugged as if Dora's age made no difference. "Little Nymphadora doing a good job assisting you in your classes?" he asked Remus.  
  
"Supervising me, technically," said Remus. "And yes, she's quite wonderful."  
  
"Your Ministry of Magic requires you to have supervision to teach students to resist curses, but last year allowed dementors around the school?" asked Félicité.  
  
"No one ever accused the Ministry of Magic of being geniuses looking out for the common good," said Sirius darkly. "You're a dementor expert, Félicité?"  
  
"I have learned some things through unfortunate chance." She told Sirius the same story she had told Remus about the little girl and how she had barely survived several weeks in the presence of a dementor with no way of defending herself. "She didn't speak for almost a year," Félicité concluded.  
  
"I'm not surprised," said Sirius, and his eyes took on a far-away look that almost made Remus end the meeting on the spot. "Everyone went silent in Azkaban in the end. Some more quickly than others, of course. Unless they screamed in their sleep."  
  
"Marianne didn't even do that," said Félicité.  
  
"Do you know what brought her back?" injected Lyall. That was the question Remus wanted answered, too.  
  
"I'd like to take credit. I know what I did, but I don't know whether it helped her or whether she merely recovered with the passage of time. Once I'd exhausted everything that's known about treatment of dementors' victims— which is far too little— I looked at what Muggles do. Muggles feel the effects of dementors even when they can't see them. Marianne couldn't explain what had happened to her, just as a Muggle could not, so I thought it would be worth exploring."  
  
"Indeed," agreed Lyall. He didn't volunteer that he had married a Muggle and revered her every day until the end of her life. Nonetheless, his comment appeared to be enough to convince Félicité that she could continue without defending her decision to look to Muggles for solutions.  
  
"Muggles have all kinds of names for the effects," Félicité continued. "In Paris, the Muggles have a hospital called L'Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière. They're quite proud of it. There was a man named Pierre Janet who worked there and wrote a book called _L'automatisme psychologique._ He believed that people who have been traumatized keep experiencing the trauma over and over again. Of course, that's what dementors do, too, in their way. They suck out your happy thoughts and leave you reliving your terrible memory over and over."  
  
"And what did Monsieur Janet propose to do about this phenomenon?"  
  
"He believed in speaking to them, having them tell their stories. That was not an option with Marianne. She couldn't speak. I needed to find a way to help her turn those memories into normal memories instead of a… a waking nightmare she couldn't escape. Sleep seems to be a part of it. That's why the prisoners in Azkaban who can't speak when they're awake can scream in their sleep. The Muggles… this will sound quite ludicrous, and you'll have to believe me when I tell you I tried it because I would have tried everything."  
  
"I'm familiar with trying the most ludicrous cures when you're desperate to help a child," said Lyall quietly. Remus' stomach turned over. Sirius, catching Lyall's meaning, clenched his jaw.  
  
Only Félicité was unaware that Lyall was talking about his own werewolf son rather than a stranger's child assaulted by an apparition. She nodded and continued her story. "Muggles have determined that people who do not dream suffer. They're angrier. They're sadder. Anyone who has ever watched someone else sleep knows that when people dream, they move their eyes. The Muggles invented a treatment based upon the patient moving her eyes while she thought about the terrible thing that happened. I could be assured Marianne was thinking of what had happened to her, and on good days her eyes followed the light from my wand by instinct."  
  
"That does sound ridiculous," said Sirius.  
  
"I don't know whether it helped or whether it was the passage of time," Félicité repeated. "I would like to ask you to take some time to consider whether you would allow me to try it on you."  
  
"My condition doesn't sound anything like Marianne's."  
  
"Perhaps not. But you're the closest comparison I've found."  
  
"Don't Muggles do their own sort of magic tricks that way?" asked Sirius. "They call it hypnosis, say it works like the Imperius Curse."  
  
"We can have someone you trust in the room to make certain I'm not putting you under the Imperius Curse," said Félicité. "And of course I won't be asking you to tell me anything about your experience that you don't want to share. Marianne never shared anything at all. I don't want an answer now," she rushed on. "I just wish for you to think about it." She stood up from her chair. Lyall stood, too.  
  
"Dad, will you walk with Félicité back to Hogwarts?" asked Remus. "I want to talk to Sirius for a moment."  
  
Lyall and Félicité had already resumed their discussion of why the dementor had not kissed Marianne. They barely seemed to notice Remus' request, or that he had not accompanied them to the door.  
  


* * *

  
"I suppose you want me to do it," said Sirius when Lyall and Félicité were gone.  
  
"I suppose I do," agreed Remus. "With proper precautions, of course."  
  
The conjured Champagne flutes were flickering back into nothingness. With a wave of his wand, Sirius helped them along on their way.  
  
"We never opened the cake," Remus realized with a smile. "Just as well." He gestured that Sirius should open the box.  
  
Scrawled across the top of the cake were the words This cake is definitely not in honor of Sirius' birthday, which is in May.  
  
Sirius couldn't seem to decide whether to be amused or exasperated. "Harry owled me a gift," he said. He ducked into the next room and returned a moment later with a framed photograph and a note. The photograph was of Harry. He had his arms flung around Ron and Hermione as they posed in front of the Hogwarts Express. The accompanying note explained what while Harry felt uncomfortably like Gilderoy Lockhart sending a picture of himself to anyone, Ron and Hermione had assured him that this was what godparents were meant to receive on their un-birthdays.  
  
While Remus read the note, Sirius unceremoniously divided the cake in two and shoveled half in Remus' direction. "I haven't forgotten what you promised me," he said.  
  
"You never taught James and me no matter how many times we asked. Then Lily asked one time, and you taught her that lullaby."  
  
"I would have taught you and James the lullaby, too, if that's what you'd been asking for, you _drewgi_."  
  
" _Drewgi_?"  
  
"Smelly dog."  
  
"I know for a fact you can do better than that."  
  
"Yes, that one's _dim gwerth rhech dafad. _Not worth a sheep's fart."  
  
"Dogs and sheep. Is there one about cats I can use on McGonagall?"  
  
" _Coc y gath._ Cat's testicles. Basically like saying bollocks."  
  
"But what's the one you said that one time when you wanted us to go away after the full moon?"  
  
" _D os i chwarae efo dy nain._ Literally _go play with your grandma_. Like you'd say bugger off."  
  
Sirius began to eat the cake, temporarily satisfied.  
  
He didn't volunteer whether he was considering letting Félicité try her French Muggle treatment on him, and Remus didn't ask.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	24. Tonks Interlude A

Tonks had begun working in earnest toward becoming an Auror at the age of thirteen. Starting early was almost a necessity; you couldn't become an Auror without top NEWTs in all of the major subjects, and you couldn't even take NEWT-level classes without getting top OWLs. With each NEWT she'd taken, the knowledge that no one had been accepted into the Auror training program for years lurked in the back of her mind.  
  
Not that she had any problem believing that she would be the first.  
  
At the age of seventeen, her mother had walked away from the Black family, and its money, and its power, and its prejudices. Her family had told her that she would not be able to build a life without them. She'd not only survived, but thrived.  
  
At the age of eleven, her father had walked into a world that had seemed unimaginable until he'd received his Hogwarts letter. The wizarding world had been at war and the school had been full of students who'd just as soon kill him as look at him, Muggle-born that he was. He'd not only survived, but thrived.  
  
The two of them, Andromeda and Ted, had rarely let a day go by that they didn't tell their daughter what a miracle she was. She was beautiful, they told her, she was kind, she was good, she was clever, she was brave. Their lives had been wonderful before she had come along, but they had never been complete without her. Her Metamorphmagus abilities didn't make her a freak; they were simply an extra way of causing mischief (her father), escaping dangerous situations (her mother), and doing good in the world (both parents). Her clumsiness was joked about only in the warmest of terms; anything she broke was easy enough to repair.  
  
Ted never hid his admiration when his daughter's spells grew faster and more powerful. _I have a wife who's smarter than I am, and now I have a daughter who's smarter than I am, too, _he'd say without a hint of embarrassment. Tonks was never quite sure that what he was saying was true, but she appreciated his pride in her.  
  
Andromeda never hid her admiration for her daughter's open playfulness and ability to collect friends wherever she went. She made sure that all of Tonks' friends knew they were welcome at the Tonks home during school holidays.  
  
Tulip, one of Tonks' best friends from school, never came. Tulip's parents made no secret of the fact that they didn't think it was safe for their child to visit the home of a Black heiress. Estranged from her family Andromeda might be, but she was still Bellatrix Lestrange's doppelgänger of a younger sister, not to mention the matter of Sirius Black— and hadn't Dumbledore himself thought that Sirius Black had broken with his family, only to be proven wrong? Andromeda had looked so painfully sad at the whole thing that Tonks had wanted to hex Tulip's parents into oblivion. As both of Tulip's parents worked at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, this probably would have been a terrible idea, and it was just as well that Tonks had never had a chance to put her plan into action.  
  
That had been the summer between their second year and their third year. That had also been when Tonks had decided that she was absolutely going to become an Auror. The Ministry could not belong only to people like Tulip's parents. The Ministry needed people who could say _my father is Muggle-born and my mother was born into an isolationist pureblood family and none of that makes me more or less worthy than anyone else._  
  
Even more, someone needed to teach the Ministry that having Bellatrix Lestrange's face didn't mean a person wanted to sit at You-Know-Who's right hand. Tonks stood in front of a mirror a dozen times that summer and morphed her face to match her mother's. It wasn't difficult; she looked somewhat like her mother without any morphing needed. Then she'd darken her hair just a bit, and narrow her eyes just a bit…  
  
Andromeda screamed the first time she caught her at it. When Tonks said what she was thinking— that changing her appearance might make her feel funny or confident or frightening, but that she was the same inside— Andromeda softened and asked her never to forget it. Then she'd baked Tonks' favorite dessert and asked Tonks to promise never to morph into anyone imprisoned in Azkaban outside the confines of her own bedroom.  
  
On the last day before Tonks' third year at Hogwarts began, Ted and Andromeda reminded her never to punish her friend for the actions of her friend's family. When he saw Tulip at King's Cross the next September, Ted reassured Tulip himself that she was always welcome should her family change their mind and thanked her for being a good friend to their daughter. Tulip had been mortified, and had given Tonks a box of dungbombs on their first night back at school. Coming from Tulip, a box of dungbombs was the most personal and meaningful of gifts.  
  
Tonks had swallowed her annoyance when Tulip explained that she'd taunted her parents all summer that they couldn't control who she chose as friends while she was at school. If she wanted to build a secret hideout with the Slytherin girl whose parents were in Azkaban, she would. If she wanted to help out her classmate who was always in trouble for sneaking into the school's hidden vaults and trying to break curses, she would do that too. And if she wanted to play pranks with Nympadora Tonks, whose earliest memory was being pulled up in front of her cousin, the mass murderer Sirius Black, on his flying motorcycle, well, Tulip would do that too.  
  
Tonks admired Tulip for being open-minded enough to choose friends her parents would not have chosen for her. But she hated that Tulip had used one of her most private, most special, most troubling memories as a weapon.  
  
Things were easier with Penny, another of Tonks' closest friends. Penny came to visit for a week early every summer. Ted and Andromeda indulgently listened to hours upon hours of giggling as Tonks tried to duplicate Penny's thick blonde hair, complete with elaborate plaits. (It was the hardest morphing job Tonks had undertaken to that point and it had taken her three years to perfect it. Andromeda occasionally came into Tonks' room with tea and biscuits "to sustain you through all that laughing.")  
  
Tonks, in turn, went to visit Penny for a week near the end of every summer. Penny's younger sister Beatrice followed them around, wide-eyed, wanting to know all about Hogwarts and their friends and their adventures. Once in a while Tonks wished that she had a sister, too, even knowing that her mother's two sisters had brought her nothing but grief.  
  
Penny's mother was Muggle-born and her father a Muggle. They loved to talk to Ted and Andromeda about the challenges of raising daughters in a world they didn't always understand, and the friendship became just as satisfying to the parents as it was to their daughters. Penny's parents were almost a generation older than Ted and Andromeda, who had made certain that Andromeda was pregnant by the time she left school, lest the Black family try to reclaim Andromeda and sell her off to an appropriate pure-blood husband. It made Tonks laugh to think that if she, too, had a baby at a young age, her parents would be grandparents when some of their friends were just having children.  
  
"Everyone lives at his own pace," said Ted mildly when Tonks brought it up one evening while they cleared some of the overgrowth from the muddy pond in the garden. "Not better, not worse, just different. Besides, you'll be happy to have us around to help with childcare if you're going to be on all-night stakeouts as an Auror."  
  
"Was it hard?" she asked as she looked out at the water. "One minute you're a student, the next minute you're a parent. Mum's family doesn't want anything to do with her, your family doesn't completely understand about magic."  
  
"It was a blessing," said Ted, as he always did. "Your mother was so good at household magic that we could get by with hardly any money at all, and when adjusting to working fulltime got hard, I knew I was going home to the two most beautiful, most wonderful girls in the world."  
  
Why, then, with the constant support and love of Ted and Andromeda, shouldn't Tonks have expected to be the first trainee accepted into the Auror program in almost ten years?  
  
She had.  
  
Why should she have worried overmuch about becoming fully qualified under the watchful gaze of Mad-Eye Moody?  
  
She hadn't.  
  
Being an Auror was everything she had hoped for. She loved the camaraderie and the opportunity to help people in danger. She loved the opportunity to dispense justice (tempered with good sense and mercy of course). She loved the moments of physical excitement and the moments of intellectual stimulation.  
  
Admittedly, she didn't care for the paperwork.  
  
And she didn't care for waiting long hours for Mundungus Fletcher to maybe, if he felt like it, show up in Knockturn Alley and maybe, if he felt like it, give them some information about a smuggler who was distributing modified explosive Quods from American Quodpot leagues and disguising them as Quaffles used to deliberately injure the unsuspecting when they blew up. It wasn't exactly mass murder (the most junior Auror on the team didn't get assigned to mass murder), but it was something worth stopping.  
  
She was disguised, presently, as a tall middle-aged woman with rough features and graying hair. No one had bothered her much; perhaps she looked too intimidating this way?  
  
She sighed to herself. If Mundungus didn't show up soon, she was going to miss family dinner at her parents' house, and she needed to be there to track Sirius down if he didn't arrive as planned (commanded, really). Her mother and Professor Lupin were concerned about Sirius, and she had promised them both to look out for him.  
  
It was time to speed up this assignment. Mad-Eye might not approve, but Mad-Eye wasn't here.  
  
She paid for the disgusting salty-sweet drink she'd been served at the dirty pub tucked in between Markus Scarrs Indelible Tattoos and an undertaker's office, then walked back into the street, trying to keep her steps measured without making them look too choreographed.  
  
Tallow and Hemp Toxic Tapers was half a block away. She hoped that she wasn't too late, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a young, dark-haired man entering the shop.  
  
He was too young and too talented to be spending his life this way, but that wasn't her business. Perhaps he would change his mind in a few years.  
  
She opened the door and was assaulted by the smell of a thousand miserable candles.  
  
"We're closed," growled the proprietor, a frizzy-haired witch who reminded Tonks of Professor Sprout gone wrong. As she'd been trained, she committed the woman's appearance to memory as best as she could for further analysis later.  
  
"You're not closed for me," Tonks informed her. "Mr. Kim and I have business that is more important than any exchange he could be making with you."  
  
Jae Kim whirled to look at her, his hand on his wand. "Do we know each other?" he asked.  
  
"Step outside a moment and I'm sure you'll remember."  
  
She watched as Jae considered his options. Stand his ground and make his business partner suspicious? Step outside into an unprotected alley with someone he didn't know?  
  
He took a step forward, and she gave him just enough of a smile not to break character. "Wotcher, Mr. Kim. It's been a while since we've done business, so I don't blame you for not remembering."  
  
It was the word wotcher that did it, as she'd hoped it would. He hastened outside and they reconvened in the darkest, dirtiest corner they could find. "Tonks. I heard you were an Auror now."  
  
"I am," she agreed. "I've heard you're still up to your old tricks." In school, everyone had known that if you wanted something from the banned items list, Jae Kim was the man to see. He'd had contacts in Knockturn Alley even then.  
  
"I've learned some new tricks, too," he said. "All of them perfectly legal."  
  
At the moment, she didn't really care. She knew he wasn't behind the Quodpot/Quaffle mess, and that was enough. "I won't ask any questions about that if you can tell me something about modified Quodpots that—"  
  
"The Spiny Serpent, inside the vases in the front window," he said quickly. "Don't know their source but I know that's where they're being sold. They won't let you in looking like that. You'll have to morph into one of their regular customers or demand that they open up in the name of the Ministry."  
  
She hadn't been sent to conduct a full-on raid today; she was only meant to look around. "Who would they open up for?"  
  
"Did you get a good look at the owner of Tallow and Hemp?"  
  
"Professor Sprout on a bad day?"  
  
Jae snorted his appreciation. "That's the one. Name's Cubbins. Don't know her first name. Not sure anyone else does."  
  
Tonks morphed into Cubbins. "How do I look?"  
  
"Wow." Jae's mouth fell open. "Not like I didn't see you do it a thousand times at school, but it never gets old. It was one thing with the professors you saw every day, but you only saw Cubbins for thirty seconds."  
  
She nodded in acknowledgment of the praise, not wanting to say more aloud when it really hadn't been very difficult.  
  
"Here," said Jae, pulling a candle from his robes. "One of hers. Smells like blood when you burn it. Maybe she'd take it in to show him. They only make them at Christmas."  
  
"Why?" she asked, knowing she shouldn't ask.  
  
"The color's more popular then." She had to admit that it was a lovely shade of red. Perhaps she would use it for her hair at dinner tonight."  
  
"Of course, it's not just colored like blood, it's actually made of—"  
  
"Thanks, Jae," she said quickly. She dug into her robes for two of the galleons Mad-Eye had given her to encourage Fletcher to talk. "For your trouble."  
  
The galleons vanished so quickly she couldn't tell how Jae did it. "No trouble. Always happy to help out the Ministry."  
  
She laughed, and so did he, before he returned to Tallow and Hemp and she proceeded to the Spiny Serpent.  
  
She knocked on the locked door and stood so that not-her-face was clearly visible through the window.  
  
The door opened almost immediately.  
  
"What do you want, Cubbins?" asked a hunchbacked man with a scar running the length of his face. Everyone in Knockturn Alley was so dedicated to eschewing kindness and good manners that she almost had to appreciate them for it.  
  
"The Christmas blood candles are back," she said, hoping that that was what they were actually called. "Thought you'd want to know, since so many people ask after them. Or perhaps you'd like it to improve on the stench of your fine establishment."  
  
He took the candle from her hand and inspected it. "Not as good as last year's. Won't be sending any of my customers in your direction."  
  
She stood on her toes to look into the nearest vase. Mad-Eye's magical eye would have come in handy.  
  
"Now if you're buying," said the man casually, "that's different."  
  
"Don't think you've got anything as good as what you had last year either," she said. Indeed, much of what she saw was broken or dirty or disgusting but not illegal. But there, in the last barrel, were the Quaffles. She picked one up.  
  
"Two galleons and your candle."  
  
"Sold."  
  
Thirty seconds later she was out the door. Sixty seconds later she had crossed into Diagon Alley and morphed into herself in the Leaky Cauldron's crowded toilet. Her clothing hung loose on her now, and she cast a quick spell to shrink it to fit before Apparating to the Ministry.  
  


* * *

  
"Didn't expect you back so soon," said Mad-Eye when she'd passed his usual tests to establish that she was, in fact, who she claimed to be. (Just morphing was never enough for him. He always allowed for the possibility that somewhere out there, another Metamorphmagus was just waiting to infiltrate the Ministry.) "Fletcher showed up?"  
  
"No," she said. She handed him the six galleons she hadn't spent and the Quodpot Quaffle. "There's a barrel of them in the last vase of the front window of the Spiny Serpent." She explained how she had gotten inside.  
  
"Write up a memo," Mad-Eye grunted. "We'll raid tomorrow. You'll want to come?"  
  
"Hogwarts duty tomorrow," she told him.  
  
"I'm sure Scrimgeour would let you switch."  
  
Without knowing why, she felt a sinking sensation of disappointment at the idea of switching. "Not necessary. I'll join the raid next time."  
  
"Wishing you were back in school?" Mad-Eye asked shrewdly. "With the Tri-Wizard Tournament, all the young ones do."  
  
"I'd have won," she told him.  
  
"You'd have got yourself killed showing off."  
  
She didn't argue. It was possible. "I'll have the memo done by 5:00."  
  
"Afraid of being late for your boyfriend?" Mad-Eye knew perfectly well that there was no boyfriend. No Auror in her right mind would try to balance a romantic relationship with her first year of independent duty.  
  
"Never meet him until 10:00," she said with a wink. "Family dinner. Want to come? Sirius is coming. You like Sirius."  
  
"You should take Sirius as an example of what not to do," said Mad-Eye. "Don't be reckless. You were reckless when you looked for your own source instead of waiting for Fletcher—"  
  
"—Jae's a lot less dangerous than Fletcher—"  
  
"And you were reckless when you went into that store on your own."  
  
"I'm not sure how you ever got to be the greatest Auror of all-time when you never took any risks," Tonks mused.  
  
"Go write that memo."  
  
"If you don't think it's too dangerous."  
  
Mad-Eye pointed at her desk. She carefully checked to see whether Mad-Eye had decided to test her by jinxing her quill to light her desk on fire (he had), exchanged it for a safe quill, and began to write.  
  


* * *

  
To her delight, Tonks arrived at her parents' house to see that Sirius was already there. She hadn't fancied tracking him down.  
  
He looked better than he'd looked the last time she'd seen him and he even seemed interested in her answers when he asked about her day. Good. Her mother would be happy, and she'd be able to make a positive report to Professor Lupin.  
  
Not that she reported to Professor Lupin.  
  
It was just nice to see how much Sirius and Professor Lupin cared about each other after so many years. She hoped that she would still feel as close to Penny and Tulip ten years from now.  
  
Dinner conversation was light and pleasant and ended only when Sirius kicked his chair back onto two legs, Tonks was unable to resist imitating him, and Tonks ended up sprawled across the kitchen floor.  
  
"I've asked you not to do that, Nymphadora," said Andromeda once she had ascertained that Tonks was unhurt.  
  
"I know it's difficult not to emulate me," said Sirius, mimicking Andromeda's tone. "But if your mother has asked you not to—"  
  
"Are you ready to duel?" she asked, drawing her wand and pointing it across the table at her cousin.  
  
A wide grin split Sirius' face. He'd always been the one to ask her to duel in the past, and she'd agreed reluctantly. Now that he was looking stronger and happier, though, she didn't expect it to feel like kicking a puppy.  
  
This time, she wasn't even sure she would win.  
  


* * *

  
She did win, but only just barely, and only (though she didn't care to admit it) on a fluke. Sirius' wand had flashed so quickly that she'd barely even seen it, and he had hardly uttered any of his spells aloud. He'd been clever and creative and supremely powerful. He'd even managed to knock her into the muddy little pond, and, more impressively, hadn't stopped to gloat for long enough to get hit with the flurry of stunning spells she'd sent at him from underwater.  
  
He dried her off an instant after they'd bowed to each other. She could have done it herself, but it was nice to have someone else do it. It felt like love.  
  
"That was always the rule back when I was in school," said Sirius, correctly reading her surprised look. They sat down side-by-side on the bank of the pond. They were still breathing hard. It had been an excellent duel. "If you do something to someone during a duel, you'd better be able to fix it."  
  
"Really?" she asked. "With the war going on and everything? You met a future Death Eater on the Quidditch Pitch at midnight, tried to kill each other, and then fixed each other up?"  
  
Sirius chuckled and his eyes took on a faraway look. "Well, no, not that kind of duel. We had an unofficial dueling club that was only open to people we were pretty sure weren't future Death Eaters. Of course, sometimes we guessed wrong," he said, and she knew he was thinking of Peter Pettigrew.  
  
"Sounds fun. We never really had a club like that. We just invited each other to the training grounds when none of the professors were looking."  
  
"Were you the best?"  
  
"Not until my last year." She made a face, remembering. "There was a girl in my year who liked to tell everyone that she was the strongest witch in the whole school, but she was so aggressive that she always left holes in her defense. It never took me more than three spells to take her out."  
  
"Slytherin?"  
  
"How did you guess?"  
  
"Just lucky."  
  
"And then there was a boy in my House who always called himself the dueling champion. Every time he fought a girl, his first spell would be orchideous. You'd be getting ready to kill him, and he'd hand you a bouquet of flowers."  
  
"I hoped you knocked him on his arse."  
  
"I did. It took a while. He was really good." She decided not to tell Sirius about how she'd dated Diego for most of a year, too, and had taken far too long to realize how wrong they'd been for each other. "It'd be nice for students to have professors really instruct them instead of letting them learn on their own. I mean, beyond what Flitwick teaches when he's trying to teach us a thousand other kinds of charms, too."  
  
"In a perfect world, that's what your Defense classes would be. I know Moony has it on the syllabus for the older students this year."  
  
"Why do you call Professor Lupin _Moony_?" she asked. She'd been meaning to ask since the first time she'd heard Sirius say it.  
  
"Stupid inside joke from twenty years ago."  
  
It wasn't an answer. She didn't press.  
  
She was too busy noticing that her heart had started beating faster and that the garden looked prettier than it ever had before.

* * *

  
The next day, she rose early before Apparating to Hogsmeade and walking to Hogwarts. As always, she made certain that her path took her past the Durmstrang ship, although she did not get a glimpse of Karkaroff. She did have to circle past a few dozen girls clustered by the water, clearly hoping to catch the eye of Viktor Krum.  
  
There was always a brief moment of disorientation when she stepped inside the castle. It had been her home for seven years of her life; some small part of her felt like she was still a child each time she entered it. She couldn't help but expect Penny to fall into step beside her, chattering about who had done what to whom and why, as they made their way to Herbology. She couldn't help looking for Tulip lingering at the edge of a crowd of Ravenclaws, her beloved toad Dennis peeking out of her pocket.  
  
She shook the feeling off and proceeded to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. The Hufflepuff fourth years were struggling with the Imperius Curse more than she would have liked. They needed every minute of their professor's attention, and she was going to help him.  
  
She barely had time to greet Professor Lupin before the students filed in.  
  
Hannah Abbot was up first today, and Tonks wondered if the girl was just so unfailingly agreeable that she was incapable of learning to resist the curse. They tried several times without a hint of resistance from Hannah; on the fourth try, she burst into tears and announced that she was too stupid to learn.  
  
Professor Lupin quietly reminded her that this sort of magic was so difficult that many adult witches and wizards never mastered it. He pointed out that she had gotten good marks in his class the year before and that the only student in her year who had thrown off the curse entirely so far was Harry Potter. Then he told her that if she liked, she was free to write an essay next time, especially since she wrote so beautifully, but that he hoped that she would decide to give the practical lesson another try.  
  
Hannah sniffled and nodded and thanked him shakily.  
  
Professor Lupin called Ernie Macmillan to the front of the room next. It was an inspired choice, in Tonks' opinion. Hannah's friend Susan clearly wanted to sit with Hannah and comfort her. Justin looked too unnerved by the whole incident to do his best work. But Ernie, Ernie was going to fight like nundu against the curse and avenge Hannah's honor.  
  
Ernie didn't break the curse, but he did fight it. Tonks could see it on his face, and she encouraged his classmates to watch closely as Ernie struggled not to lie down on the floor and roll himself over and over the way Hannah had done.  
  
The rest of the students, too, made incremental progress and were sent off to their next class with Hannah's tears a distant memory.  
  
Professor Lupin gathered his things rather more quickly than usual. (Tonks was an Auror, after all, and it was her job to take notice of the patterns in which people did things. She hadn't been paying any special attention to Professor Lupin, she didn't think. She did not know why this small deviation, the loss of two minutes' conversation with the man, disappointed her.)  
  
"You seem to be in a rush, Professor," she said as he snapped his briefcase shut.  
  
"I have a kappa in my office for the third-years to study. He needs to be fed before my next class."  
  
"Oh." Then, for no reason at all, she blurted out, "I've never actually seen a kappa."  
  
He smiled at her, a friendly, beautiful smile. "Come with me."  
  
"I'd follow you anywhere," she said, and even though it was a joke she quite enjoyed saying it.  
  
The kappa was an ugly thing, scaly and glowering. "Is that real blood you're feeding it?" she asked.  
  
"I'm afraid so," said Professor Lupin. "All rumors that I bled my students to feed my kappa are untrue, however."  
  
"Did it come from that place in Knockturn Alley that sells the candles made from real blood?" she asked. "I was there yesterday on a mission. I could have picked some up for you."  
  
"You know, I"m not precisely sure where Hagrid acquired the blood," he answered. The kappa, having drunk, looked significantly less unhappy. "All went well with your mission?"  
  
"Very well. I was home in time for dinner with my family. I meant to tell you— Sirius is doing much better. One of these times he's going to beat me when we duel."  
  
"There won't be any shame in that. He's rather magnificent."  
  
She thought, not for the first time or even the second, how nice it was that the two of them were so fond of one another. "Why does he call you Moony?"  
  
Professor Lupin shook his head. "A very silly schoolboy joke. I can hardly remember when it started. The dangers of getting old, you know."  
  
So neither one of them was going to answer her. The story behind the nickname must have been a damn good one. She was going to figure it out sooner rather than later; she promised herself that.  
  
She didn't tell any of that to Professor Lupin, of course. Instead, she told him that he wasn't very old at all.  
  
"Kind of you to say," he said.  
  
"Kind is what you did in class today," she corrected. "You were wonderful with Hannah Abbot. I really admired the way you handled her."  
  
"She's a pleasure to teach, really."  
  
"You would have been just as good with a student who isn't a pleasure to teach."  
  
He smiled, a little sadly. "You have to find a way to make them all a pleasure to teach. You're doing them a disservice otherwise."

And that was the moment that something clicked in Tonks' brain.  
  
She had had many experiences in school. She'd been the jokester jumping out of a pot in Herbology to scare her classmates; she'd been the top ranked student with NEWT scores that would open all the doors in the world. She'd been the girl laughing until her stomach hurt as she tried to recreate her friend's elaborate hairdo; she'd been the girl staring into the mirror at the reflection of her aunt who had tortured innocent people to the point of insanity. She'd spent hours perfecting her skills as a dueler; she'd spent hours in detention, listening to Filch mutter about shackles. She'd had a head equally full of cheeky remarks and fantasies of saving the world.  
  
One thing she had never done was develop a crush on a professor.  
  
No wonder she had turned down the chance to help with a takedown to watch fourteen-year-olds roll around on their classroom floor. No wonder she'd been disappointed when she'd thought she and Professor Lupin would miss their usual after-class chat. No wonder _her parents' garden had suddenly looked beautiful the minute she'd thought of him._  
  
She put her hand on his arm to see what it felt like, to see how he would react. When he turned to her, she was certain that she saw affection in his eyes. Affection— and even a flash of lust?  
  
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for letting me see the kappa."  
  
 _Thank you for letting me know there's a chance._  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	25. Sirius, Considering

November was better than October, and that was the only positive thing Sirius could really say for it.  
  
With Halloween behind him for another year, and the matter of fighting the Ministry behind him forever, he could pretend to feel well enough to eat and sleep almost like a normal human being. When he glanced in the mirror, he no longer saw a corpse; in fact, he noticed that his hair suddenly looked soft and shiny and healthy.  
  
At least no one would pity him for having terrible hair.  
  
He could still feel pity wrapping around him like a blanket.  
  
Harry was using the mirror to talk to him on a regular basis, but it was clear that Harry didn't need anything— he just wanted confirmation that Sirius hadn't run off to hurl himself at James' grave again.  
  
Remus had asked him to come to Hogwarts on the night of the full moon. _"There's an eclipse,"_ Remus had said, as if that somehow made Sirius less extraneous in a world in which someone had invented Wolfsbane Potion. Remus didn't need Sirius any more than Harry did; he just wanted the opportunity to try to push Sirius into trying a weird Muggle treatment that was supposed to make Sirius stop feeling awful about being alive while James and Lily were dead. (As if Sirius wanted to stop feeling awful about being alive while James and Lily were dead.)  
  
Andromeda had started insisting that he come to dinner once a week, and it had been rather strongly implied that if he didn't show up, her Auror of a daughter was going to track him down and drag him there by his newly attractive hair. At least Andromeda wasn't hiding anything. She didn't even bother to come up with a pretext like Harry and Remus did. The family dinners were to make certain he hadn't done anything to damage himself lately. Or perhaps some sort of posthumous thank you to Uncle Alphard, patron saint of rebellious nieces and nephews. Uncle Alphard had given Sirius the money he needed to break away from his family for good, and he didn't doubt that Uncle Alphard had helped Andromeda too.  
  
It was strange that now they _were_ the Black family. Could you rebel against something when you had become all that there was of the thing?  
  
If Sirius wasn't the Black White Sheep, who precisely was he?  
  
Harry's godfather. Remus' friend.  
  
But they didn't need him.  
  
He was the person who was supposed to find the rest of Voldemort's Horcruxes before the world went to hell again, based only on Remus' wildly incomplete memories. He was reasonably certain that there was one in Bellatrix's vault, but even if he found a way to get into the vault, he wouldn't know what he was looking for. It was one more piece of his life that was hopeless.  
  
He considered not going to Andromeda's ridiculous family dinner— why on earth was Anna doing this after all of the formal dinners to which they had been subjected as children?— and letting Tonks track him down. He'd almost beaten her in their last duel. He essentially _had_ beaten her; she'd just gotten lucky at the end, and he thought she knew it.  
  
He liked Tonks a lot. He liked her pink hair and her punk Muggle clothes. He liked that she'd accepted a dangerous job that helped keep everyone else safer. He liked that she had inherited Ted's easy manner with everyone she met and Anna's habit of noticing the smallest detail but not letting on how much she knew.  
  
He just didn't like that Tonks was an adult. She was a child in his mind, and while she'd grown up he'd been… what, exactly? Decaying? Marking time?

With no small amount of effort, he got ready to go to Anna's house. He liked Tonks. There was no need to make her chase him down like he was a smuggler in Diagon Alley. It didn't matter that even the thought of stepping outside his own space was exhausting.  
  


* * *

  
It was Ted who opened the door when Sirius knocked. A delicious smell hit him as soon as he stepped inside. Andromeda was a tremendous cook. Sirius could hear her in the kitchen.  
  
"Glad to see you, Sirius," said Ted. "Dromeda needs to show off for someone other than me, and Dora can't make it today."  
  
So he could have skipped the pity invitation without inconveniencing his little cousin. He considered turning around on the spot. "Is she stuck at work?" he asked instead of Apparating away in Ted's face.  
  
Ted nodded. "More with this case involving exploding Quaffles. Apparently the Quaffles were one thing among many, and some of the modified objects were far more dangerous. Come." He took Sirius by the arm and steered him into the kitchen. Sirius didn't let himself be steered around by just anyone, but Ted had always managed to present himself as the friendly big brother everyone wished he had.  
  
(Ted had probably been the best prefect in the history of Hogwarts. No offense to Moony or Lily.)  
  
"Hello, Sirius," Andromeda greeted as she levitated platters of food to the table. "Thank you for coming."  
  
"Thank you for inviting me," he returned, the polite response so deeply ingrained from childhood that he couldn't do anything but say it.  
  
Andromeda seemed to recognize the reflex, and her gray eyes sparkled with mischief. "Now remember," she said, and her voice had taken on an imperious quality, "at a proper Black dinner you will behave yourself as befits an heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black."  
  
In the midst of his gloom, he was suddenly glad that he had lived long enough to think that those words were funny.  
  
The five of them, Anna and her sisters and Sirius and Regulus, had all had that particular speech memorized long before they were Hogwarts-age.  
  
"You will scrub your face," Sirius began. "You will comb your hair neatly."  
  
"Your hair will not be in your face," Andromeda picked up in turn. "It will be pulled back as befits a young lady."  
  
"You will wear the robes the house-elf has laid out for you. You will not put them on backwards. You will not skip any buttons. You will not add any accessories. You will not change the colors or the cut. You will not wrinkle your robes, tear your robes, or get your robes dirty."  
  
"The first one of you girls to complain that she can't breathe in her dress robes will find her dress robes to be spelled one size smaller. If you can speak to complain, you can breathe."  
  
"You will not speak until you are spoken to. When you speak, you will not discuss Muggles, Mudbloods, bodily fluids, anything that makes you unhappy, and above all you will not mention this conversation."  
  
"You will sit up straight. You will not squirm, wiggle, twist, swing your feet, or otherwise move other than as necessary to eat or to make eye contact with the adult who has addressed you."  
  
"You will not, under any circumstances, make eye contact with each other."  
  
"You will not eat until everyone has been served. You will not acknowledge the house-elf serving you. You will not comment on whether or not you like the food unless you are asked a direct question, in which case you will make only positive remarks."  
  
"You will not answer with your mouth full."  
  
"You will take small bites to lessen the chance of having your mouth full."  
  
"You will eat everything on your plate. Slowly. All three courses."  
  
"The butter plate is at the left of your place setting above the forks. Salad fork, fish fork, dinner fork, in that order."  
  
"Dinner knife is closest to the plate. Fish knife is outside it. The oyster fork is the only fork ever placed to the right of the plate."  
  
"Glasses are on the right, above the knives and spoons. The water goblet is directly above the knives. The wine glass is in the middle. The champagne flute for the opening toast is to right of the wine glass. Your wine will be watered. There will be just enough champagne in your flute to take one swallow during the toast."  
  
 _"And by Merlin's green Slytherin tie, Sirius, keep all four legs of your chair on the floor at all times or you will find the chair stuck to the ground and yourself stuck to the chair. Again!"_  
  
The two of them burst out laughing and Sirius collapsed into his usual chair, kicking it onto two legs.  
  
"Did you ever find the chair stuck to the ground and yourself stuck to the chair?" asked Ted with amusement.  
  
"Repeatedly," said Sirius. "But they only left me there overnight two or three times that I remember."  
  
Andromeda flicked her wand and knocked Sirius' chair back into its proper position as Ted seated himself.  
  
"Shall we speak only French at this dinner?" she asked with mock-seriousness. "I understand that it will help keep us _toujours pur."_  
  
"I hate to break it to you Anna," said Sirius just as seriously, "but you married a Muggle-born and had a child with him. You will never again be _toujours pur. "_  
  
"Perhaps there's still hope for you," suggested Andromeda, her face still perfectly straight.  
  
 _" J'en ai marre de parler francais,"_ Sirius answered. _I'm tired of speaking French._  
  
"When have you been speaking French?"  
  
"The Triwizard Tournament," Sirius explained as he reached for his food, in violation of perhaps fourteen rules of Black Dining Etiquette. He hadn't planned to tell Ted and Andromeda about it, but in the moment it felt right. "There's a Beauxbatons professor who wants to… experiment on me."  
  
"I suppose you should let her," suggested Ted. "I don't think you'd be breaking one rule of Black Family Conduct."  
  
Andromeda glanced sideways at her husband, loving and amused. It hurt Sirius' heart a little bit. He was happy that Andromeda was still happy after all of these years. He was glad that she had built a beautiful life for herself.  
  
He was just sorry that he had never built a life for himself, and now it was almost certainly too late. Most of his friends were dead. Harry was grown. His former classmates were married, established in careers, and set in their ways.  
  
"What kind of experiment does this Beuxbatons professor want to do on you?" asked Andromeda, breaking into Sirius' thoughts. He explained as much as he could. He'd been a bit distracted during the meeting. His thoughts had wandered again and again to happier years, and happier birthdays…  
  
"I don't like the sound of it," said Ted. "When I was in Muggle school, they brought a hypnotist in as entertainment one day— it was a celebration of the school's founding or something. He'd hypnotize students and they'd run up and down the aisles clucking like chickens and asking the rest of us to pet their invisible pigs. I thought it was rubbish and they were all pretending. Of course, the hypnotist covered his arse by saying hypnosis wouldn't work on you if it didn't believe in it, so I didn't bother daring him to try it on me. I wish I'd done it, now."  
  
"If it's rubbish," said Andromeda carefully, "there's no harm done. If it's the Muggle equivalent of the Imperius Curse, that's different."  
  
"She said if I did it, I could have someone in the room."  
  
"Don't do it without letting us talk to her first," said Ted and Andromeda almost in unison. Sirius almost reminded them that they weren't his parents and he wasn't their child, but he held his tongue. It was nice enough to have someone care, even if he was tired of pity and pity invitations to dinner.  
  
If Félicité Palomer's non-magical magic worked…  
  
He left rather earlier than he usually did since there was no Tonks to duel. Ted walked him to the door.  
  
"Thank you for coming, Sirius," he said quietly, ending the evening the way it had begun. "Dromeda missed you a lot when you were gone. She never talked about it, but she did. I think it meant a lot to her to joke about her childhood today. That's something that's normal for most of us, but it's something she lost when she lost you. We're hardly going to have the Malfoys over to reminisce, after all."  
  
Sirius didn't know what to say to that.  
  
"Apparate carefully," said Ted, reprieving Sirius from saying anything at all and patting Sirius on the back.

* * *

Sirius sent a note to Remus when he returned home.  
  
 _Dear Mr. Moony,_

_ Is our appointment still scheduled for November 18? With your busy schedule, you should not feel obligated to keep it. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Padfoot _

* * *

_ Dear Mr. Padfoot, _

_ Barring a world-altering catastrophe of unlikely and epic proportions, my schedule for November 18 remains unchanged. Did you get a better offer? _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Moony _

* * *

_ Dear Mr. Moony, _

_ No, no better offer. Always delighted to kick your hairy arse. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Padfoot _

* * *

_ Dear Mr. Padfoot, _

_ How would you know whether you find kicking my arse delightful? You've never managed to do it. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Moony _

* * *

_ Dear Mr. Moony, _

_ See you on November 18. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Padfoot _

* * *

_ Dear Mr. Padfoot, _

_ Show up or face dire consequences. I have plans for you. _

_ Regards, _   
_ Mr. Moony _

* * *

With the help of a good disillusionment charm and one of the tunnels from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts (Filch knew about the tunnel in question, but Sirius reckoned he could handle Filch if the need arose), Sirius let himself into Remus' office without incident.  
  
He wasn't certain whether sneaking in had been a requirement. Remus had probably cleared his visit with Dumbledore— and as Sirius was technically an added layer of security against a ferocious dark creature, there was no reason that Dumbledore should have objected.  
  
But after years of Azkaban, and another year on the run, Sirius felt more comfortable in the shadows. He didn't know if he would ever again feel a desire for attention.  
  
He supposed it didn't matter.  
  
He opened the drawer beside the door and glanced down at the diadem they had found when he'd last visited Hogwarts. It looked unchanged. He shut the drawer. It was something to worry about later.  
  
There was a tray of uneaten food sitting atop the chest of drawers. Sirius inspected that, too; it was typical Hogwarts fare.  
  
"You can have that if you want," Remus' voice rasped out. "But don't eat it in front of me."  
  
Sirius ignored the invitation. It wasn't even 5:00, but moonrise was early in Scotland in the winter. He wondered whether Remus had ever given real consideration to spending the winter somewhere in the southern hemisphere where the moon spent fewer hours in the sky.  
  
"Nauseated?" he asked Remus, following the sound of his voice. Remus had covered himself with a blanket and was slouched into a chair, looking unhappy and uncomfortable. The summer full moons had gone so well that Sirius had almost forgotten the full spectrum of symptoms that sometimes foretold the full moon. Of course, Remus had always been an expert at hiding them. Most of the people who knew his secret had little idea of how brutal the full moon could be and no idea that the days before the full moon were pretty bad, too.  
  
Nausea. (That one had been the most common, Sirius seemed to recall.)  
  
Vomiting. (It had only happened once in class— and it had been Potions, so explained away easily enough— but Remus had been so humiliated that James claimed to have poisoned him in the hopes of getting Moony to vomit on Snivellus. That had resulted in detention for James and James had complained for a week about how Slughorn's carrying on about James coming from a long line of brilliant potions makers had made James want to vomit, too.)  
  
Tooth pain. (Yes another excuse for Remus not to eat the day before the full moon. Sirius had been sure he'd outgrown all of this. Or perhaps he'd just hoped.)  
  
Headaches. (Remus had always said that those weren't really related to lycanthropy, they were related to his poor taste in friends.)  
  
Dizziness. (One of the few times Remus' condition had truly terrified Sirius had been the day Remus had simply fallen over the grand staircase. Sirius had been too startled to blame the nearest Slytherin. Luckily the dizziness phase had coincided with their fourth year and then vanished, as far as Sirius knew.)  
  
Fever. (That one was almost as common as nausea, and taking a good look at Remus Sirius thought that he had probably been running a fever all day today.)  
  
Insomnia. (Remus had claimed to like this side effect, as he'd been able to read ahead in his textbooks before missing half a week of classes.)  
  
And of course, an anxious moodiness that had sent Remus off to hide for years before he'd realized that, honestly, most teenagers felt that way sometimes, and besides, his friends thought he was hilarious when he was in a bitterly sarcastic mood.  
  
Sirius crossed the room in two long strides and brushed his hand over Remus' forehead. Yes. Definitely a fever this time, and a medium-high one, too.  
  
"It's the eclipse," grumbled Remus. "You'd think they'd make it better. They make it worse."  
  
"The Wolfsbane Potion doesn't help with any of the pre-turn symptoms?" Sirius asked.  
  
"No. It lets me keep my mind, but it doesn't help with anything physical. And if you tasted it, you wouldn't want to eat, either."  
  
"When was the last time you ate?"  
  
"Not discussing it. Saw you check the diadem. Any ideas?"  
  
"It hasn't… done anything since we put it there?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Maybe we should just leave it until we have a few more. Then go to Dumbledore."  
  
"Maybe." Remus shuddered and Sirius winced in sympathy. Moonrise was coming on fast.  
  
"So as long as you're going to keep your mind, can I stay human tonight?" He wondered if they'd done that in the alternate years Remus had lived without him.  
  
"No!" said Remus so emphatically that Sirius knew he had his answer. No, Remus had never let someone stay with him in human form. "Not this time, no—"  
  
Sirius snapped into his dog form and lay his head on Remus' lap. Remus' hand brushed Sirius' fur once before he froze.  
  
The transformation was ugly. Remus, Sirius thought, was perfectly nice to look at. The wolf, despite its power to destroy, was beautiful.  
  
But those in-between stages… those in-between stages were as disgusting as they were painful.  
  
Then the wolf slid from the chair, its long claws clicking on the floor. Sirius stepped back and looked at the wolf.  
  
For the first time, he could see all of Remus— not just an echo of him— in the wolf's eyes.  
  
It was amazing.  
  
He wished James could have been here to see it.  
  
He couldn't help but smiling his stupid doggy smile.  
  
The wolf looked at him with disdain, flicked his tail, and walked away.  
  
Sirius didn't hold with being treated like a silly puppy by this wolf, no, he didn't. He jumped over the wolf and turned to face him again, head lowered, tail wagging.  
  
The wolf took the invitation and pounced.  
  
The next three hours were a non-stop wrestling match.  
  
It was something Sirius had done too many times to count, and also never before. The wolf had always recognized Sirius as part of his pack, and Remus even remembered flashes of what they'd done the morning after. But the wolf had wrestled on instinct, and Remus wrestled with strategy and a bit of self-consciousness.  
  
Sirius won again and again and again. He let Remus up each time he'd pinned him and Remus resolutely gave it another go with unchanged results.  
  
Oh, Remus would be hearing about this once they both had the capacity for speech again.  
  
For now, Sirius barked and wagged his tail.  
  
They lay down together, panting, just as Sirius and Tonks had sat beside Andromeda's pond after their more traditional dual the week before. Sirius thought that he had one more round of wrestling in him, but before he knew it, he was asleep.

* * *

  
He woke up early in the morning, a few hours before the moon was to set. He'd been dreaming the same old dreams: Voldemort, dementors, James' death, Peter's betrayal, his mother cornering him in his childhood bedroom, Harry's inevitable demise, his own uselessness. Above all there was painful dark loneliness that didn't go away even when he was in dog form, even when Remus was curled up two inches away.  
  
He sat up and stared at Remus until the moon set and the wolf awoke with a shudder and a cry. The transformation to human somehow wasn't as grotesque as the transformation to wolf, and an instant later Remus lay naked on the rug, sweating and trembling, a single tear of exhaustion on one cheek.  
  
Sirius jumped to his feet, transformed, and drew his wand in one smooth motion. A cleaning charm to get the sweat off of Remus skin (no blood, so the potion was certainly worth something); the soft blanket draped around his shoulders as Sirius led him to the bed.  
  
"Thank you," said Remus as Sirius handed him a glass of water and a vial of pain-numbing potion.  
  
"You should eat something."  
  
Remus smiled. "When I wake up."  
  
"You should also learn to wrestle."  
  
"I'll work on it."  
  
"That was a pathetic performance."  
  
Remus smiled again, but he didn't bother to answer. "Harry will be here in a few minutes to have breakfast with you before he goes to class. The house-elves should have left a tray in the outer office."  
  
"Harry?" asked Sirius, knowing that he sounded like a right idiot.  
  
"I told you I had plans for you."  
  
"Thought that meant plans to show me that you can't wrestle—"  
  
Remus threw a pillow at Sirius, so Sirius determined that he wasn't terribly unwell and let himself into the outer office.

* * *

  
As Remus had promised, Harry was sitting in one of the chairs and a tray of bacon and eggs was sitting on the desk beside a carafe of pumpkin juice.  
  
"How's Professor Lupin?" asked Harry.  
  
"As well as can be expected. How are you?"  
  
And Harry rambled about how Hagrid was infatuated with Madame Maxime, the Headmistress of Beauxbatons, and how the girls were all following Viktor Krum around while the boys lost all ability to speak if they so much as saw Fleur Delacour, and how he was looking forward to practicing with Cedric and had come around to really hoping that Cedric would win the whole Tournament easily, and how he had a Transfiguration quiz today but changing guinea fowl into guinea pigs, it was so hard to get rid of all of the feathers…  
  
Harry demonstrated his technique and Sirius corrected it. There was something about sitting in this room that made someone want to teach. Or, more likely, there was something about sitting beside Harry.  
  
He felt normal for once. He sensed that Harry felt the same.  
  
He would do anything to get a little bit more of that normality for Harry. He would even seek out Félicité Palomer.  
  
After Harry left for his Transfiguration quiz, Sirius checked on Remus once more (sleeping hard, not likely to wake until afternoon) and left as well.  
  
This time, he didn't bother to hide himself. None of the students took any interest in him anyway, and when he left the castle he wandered over to the Beauxbatons Carriage and wondered whether he should knock.  
  
Knocking turned out to be unnecessary. Félicité appeared as quickly as if he had summoned her, a buttered baguette in her hand. "I hope that your presence here means you've been considering what we discussed when we last met," she said.  
  
"Considering," agreed Sirius. "I spoke to a cousin of mine about hypnosis. He's Muggle-born— cousin by marriage, he is— and he says it's not something that works on someone who doesn't believe in it." There was no need to explain exactly what Ted had said. He just wanted Félicité to know that she couldn't trick him by expecting him to have no way of learning about the Muggle world.  
  
"This isn't hypnosis," said Félicité. "I know that you got the idea because I mentioned eye movement, and that is what I used on Marianne, but there are other ways. I can touch your hands instead. It's about stimulating different parts of the brain to make traumatic memories less traumatic. It alleviates some of the feelings that go along with those memories as it goes."  
  
It sounded even more ridiculous than it had sounded when he'd thought she'd been suggesting hypnosis.  
  
"What do you have to lose?" she wheedled, noticing the skepticism he hadn't bothered to keep off of his face. "You aren't going to try anything that involves your Ministry, are you?" she asked slyly. "And you aren't going to try anything that allows giving anyone else access to your memories, whether by Legilimancy or by conversation." That was true enough, and he started to tell her that he was willing to try when she continued. "The problem is that I may not be able to help if some memory— if some memory is so painful that you can't focus on something good and positive to pull yourself out of the memory at the end of our meeting. Tell me, are you able to produce a Patronus?"  
  
He recalled with distaste the night they had, at long last, captured Peter Pettigrew. He wouldn't have been able to cast a Patronus to save all of their lives; he'd been entirely dependent upon his precocious thirteen-year-old godson.  
  
But he had been perfectly capable of casting a Patronus during the war. He'd learned almost as quickly as Remus, who was freakishly good at that sort of thing.  
  
He raised his wand and let his mind drift back to Andromeda's clean kitchen as they laughed about their childhood… _his mother who had never missed the opportunity to tell him what a disappointment he was, and he'd joked about being stuck to a chair all night but if someone had ever done that to Harry… _he let his mind linger on wrestling with Remus last night, the dog-wolf connection unique and satisfying… _b ut there were supposed to be four of them, not two, and James should have been the one who lived to see Remus' spirit looking out of the wolf's eyes_… he let his mind move forward to the moment when Harry had grinned at him over his pumpkin juice, just a godson catching up with his godfather before a Transfiguration quiz…  
  
 _"Expecto Patronum!"_ he shouted with more force than he needed.  
  
A giant dog burst out of the mist and romped off toward the woods.  
  
"A true corporeal Patronus," said Félicité. "Most impressive."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"You're ready, then. You can bring your suspicious cousins if you don't want to be alone."  
  
Her words echoed in his head. _If some memory is so painful that you can't focus on something good and positive to pull yourself out…_  
  
He knew exactly what it felt like to be stuck in a terrible memory, and he was not going to demonstrate for Anna or Ted. "I don't think that's necessary," he said. "Can we start today?"  
  
She laughed. "After the first Task. That is, after all, why I'm here."  
  
It must be nice, he reflected, to have a reason to be somewhere.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	26. Harry and the Task

When eight o'clock on Thursday rolled around, it was no surprise that Hermione was jealous that Harry was going to meet Lupin and Cedric for extra Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons. Hermione had never heard of a class that she didn't want to take, with the obvious exception of Divination. Even Ron looked slightly wistful as Harry grabbed his things.  
  
"Make sure to pay attention so you can tell us what you've learned tomorrow," said Hermione, peeking out from behind her enormous Arithmancy textbook.  
  
"I will," Harry promised. It felt odd to be leaving the two of them behind. The dementor lessons last year had been different— he'd been the only one so badly affected by dementors that he'd _needed_ them. Otherwise, he and Ron and Hermione had always been dragged into their adventures together. Hermione and Ron deserved a special Defense lesson just as much as Harry did.  
  
He had been in the classroom for a few minutes before he remembered that, while last year's dementor lessons had been about him, this year's lessons were about Cedric.  
  
"Do you know how to cast a shield charm, Harry?" asked Lupin pleasantly.  
  
Harry shook his head.  
  
"I have it on good authority that it's on your Defense syllabus later this year. No matter, this will be an excellent opportunity for you to get in some early practice. Like so. _Protego_."  
  
Harry mimicked Lupin, and Cedric did, too, his eyes slightly wider than usual. Harry was pleased that Cedric didn't seem at all confident with the shield charm; it made him feel less like he was behind where he ought to have been.  
  
"This is technically OWL-level work," explained Lupin. "But many adult wizards do struggle to perform it properly. It's a shame, because it will repel the majority of hexes, as you'll see when Cedric begins hexing you."  
  
"I'm going to hex him?" asked Cedric.  
  
"I'm afraid so," said Lupin. "As champion, you will encounter many obstacles far less pleasant and charming than Harry. You will need to make your way past them. Obviously we won't be practicing the more dangerous hexes on a human target, but I want some useful moderate ones to be at the forefront of your mind."  
  
Cedric nodded, eyes blazing.  
  
For the next thirty minutes, Lupin called out one spell after another and Cedric cast them on Harry. Harry knew many of the spells well already: Expelliarmus, Relashio, Stupefy. Cedric knocked him out twice. He jumped back up after Lupin revived him, furious at himself for not casting a stronger shield charm.  
  
"Your shield charm's looking much better," said Cedric kindly, but Harry didn't want kindness from the person who had thrashed him four times out of the last five.  
  
"It is," agreed Lupin. "Well done, Harry."  
  
"Should we switch places?" asked Cedric. "I might want a strong shield charm when I run up against whatever it is on Saturday."  
  
"Very well," said Lupin. "Attack him as soon as you're ready, Harry."  
  
Harry was ready. " _Expelliarmus_!" he snapped, and he was delighted when Cedric's shield charm faltered and his wand flew into Harry's hand.  
  
"I told you there was a reason I chose Harry for this," said Lupin to Cedric.  
  
"I didn't doubt it," said Cedric, scowling a little as Harry returned his wand. "I've heard that he's the only one in the school who's beaten the Imperius so far. Another go, Harry, same spell."  
  
"Different spell," Lupin over-ruled. "You're not going to know what's coming at you during the Tournament."  
  
Harry's stunning spell wasn't as strong as his disarming spell, and this time Cedric successfully deflected it. After a dozen or so more tried, Lupin whispered in Harry's ear " _Contritum Oculi_."  
  
Harry nodded and put all of his force into the spell. " _Contritum Oculi_!"  
  
It might have been because they had been at it so long and Cedric was tired, or because he was surprised by the unexpected incantation, but Cedric's shield charm fell. Then Cedric himself fell, clutching at his eyes. Harry saw with horror that Cedric's eyes were swollen shut and looked terribly painful.

Lupin quickly produced a vial of orange liquid. "Oculus Potion," he told Cedric. "It will counteract the effects of the curse."  
  
Cedric drank the potion greedily. "Better," he said, though his eyes were still watering. "Thanks."  
  
Lupin guided Cedric to sit on the professor's desk and gestured that Harry should join him. Harry did, with some trepidation. It felt strange to sit beside someone he had just hurt so unexpectedly and yet so deliberately.  
  
"Now," said Lupin. "You should each have learned a very important lesson from that spell. Can either of you tell me what those lessons are?"  
  
"Not to cast a spell as hard as you can when you don't know what it does?" asked Harry sourly, but Lupin's smile lit up the room.  
  
"Precisely. Not even when your Defense professor tells you to do it. Defense professors can be on the dodgy side, after all."  
  
Both Harry and Cedric laughed.  
  
"What else have you learned? Cedric?"  
  
Cedric was quiet for so long that Harry almost wondered whether he was as thick as the Weasley twins always claimed he was. "That a mild hex can do more damage than a stronger one in the right situation," he said at last, and Lupin looked even more pleased.  
  
"Very good. If this were a normal class, I'd give ten to Hufflepuff. Are you recovered enough to try casting that spell on Harry?"  
  
Harry's stomach flipped with discomfort. He could see that Lupin had a second vial of orange potion at the ready, but he still didn't fancy being on the other end of the… "Professor Lupin?"  
  
"Yes, Harry?"  
  
"What's that spell called?"  
  
"The Conjunctivitis Curse."  
  
"I don't need to practice that one," said Cedric, perhaps sensing Harry's discomfort with the idea.  
  
Lupin's face darkened so quickly that Harry didn't have a chance to feel relief. "No? After you just told me that you never know when a very specific, very mild hex will help you more than a dozen stunning spells?"  
  
"In general," said Cedric. "But when will I ever need to give someone pinkeye?"  
  
"You tell me," Lupin challenged. "Harry, help him. When might something like this be your best recourse?"  
  
Without warning, the image of his first Halloween at Hogwarts, and the troll in the girls' toilet, popped into Harry's mind. "Any time your opponent is a lot bigger than you," he said. "If you're fighting someone— something— that's too big to stun, it would help if it couldn't see you. So it wouldn't know where the attack was coming from, or just so you could have a better chance of getting by it."  
  
"That's right! That's what you're supposed to do with a dragon!" exclaimed Cedric excitedly. "Their eyes are their weak point. Almost any spell will just bounce off of them, but if you hit them in the eyes, you have a chance."  
  
Lupin smiled at them both. "Are you ready with your shield charm, Harry?"  
  
Harry jumped to his feet, suddenly feeling energized again. " _Protego_!"  
  
"Try the jelly-legs curse," Lupin instructed Cedric. Then Cedric cast a leg-locker and a tickling charm and even the bat-bogey hex before he hit Harry with the conjunctivitis curse.  
  
Harry's eyes exploded with burning pain and he knocked his glasses to the floor (it turned out that glasses did not offer any protection against the conjunctivitis curse). In an instant, Cedric was pulling him onto the table and Lupin was holding the potion to his lips. The pain stopped almost instantly.  
  
"Good," said Lupin. "You've both done very well."  
  
"We aren't done yet!" objected Cedric, sounding scandalized. "The first task is on Saturday afternoon!"  
  
"And you are prepared for it," said Lupin. "You and Harry knocking one another out until neither one of you can move isn't going to help matters, although I do wish I'd left a little more time for you to practice hitting a moving target."  
  
"Just a few more goes like that, then?" asked Harry. "I'm good at being a moving target. I had to be, growing up with Dudley. He couldn't hit me because he couldn't catch me."  
  
He didn't realize what he'd said until he noticed that Cedric was staring at him with concern and pity. Lupin, of course, knew all about the Dursleys; Cedric did not.  
  
Lupin seemed to decide that the best way to diffuse the situation was to give in. "All right, just a few tries, and only minor hexes from you, Cedric. Nothing stronger than a tickling charm. On the count of three, Harry, be ready to dodge. One, two, THREE!"  
  
Harry ran. He jumped over a desk and behind a table; he criss-crossed the room, casting furniture aside as he went. Eventually, though, one of Cedric's spells hit him square in the chest and he tumbled to the floor in a fit of helpless giggles.  
  
 _" Finite Incantantem_," said Cedric quickly. He pulled Harry up from the floor while Lupin set the furniture to rights with a casual wave of his wand.  
  
"Next time we do that, I'm bringing my Firebolt," Harry declared.  
  
"You should!" agreed Cedric eagerly. "I miss Quidditch so much. I'm happy I have the opportunity to compete in the Tournament, but canceling Quidditch for the year…"  
  
"It's out of order," Harry agreed.  
  
"We could've done both," said Cedric. "Even if I had to give up my place on the Hufflepuff team, we've got a few good Chasers coming up, we could move Rawson to Seeker."  
  
Harry thought they might have talked all night about the grave injustice of a school year without Quidditch if Lupin hadn't ordered them back to their own dormitories.  
  
Harry suddenly felt beaten and exhausted, but he didn't want Lupin or Cedric to see how tired he was. They might decide that Cedric should go easier on him next time or, worse, that Cedric should have an older, more experienced training partner.  
  
He reached the fourth-year Gryffindor boys' dormitory just as Dean, Seamus, Neville, and Ron were getting ready for bed. His roommates immediately took in the sight of his red eyes— the potion had gotten rid of all of the pain and most of the swelling, but apparently not the color— and began to speculate as to why Harry had been crying. Seamus thought it must have been a girl; Dean said Harry was probably still sulking because there was no Quidditch this year. Ron helpfully volunteered that maybe the house-elves in the kitchen had decided never again to make treacle tart, and Neville laughed rather too hard at that.  
  
Harry told the lot of them to sod off before collapsing into his own bed, looking forward to the first task almost as much as if he had been competing himself.

* * *

  
The next few days flew by, and before Harry knew it Professor Sprout was escorting Cedric out of the Great Hall midway through lunch. The entire Hufflepuff table stood to send Cedric off. Harry, with a quick apologetic glance at Angelina, stood as well, and a smattering of other Gryffindors (mostly girls) joined him. Ron looked at him as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses, but on his other side Hermione smiled and stood.  
  
The three of them walked together onto the grounds about an hour later. Fred and George, they found, were hard at work distributing owl-order forms for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes in at least four languages. They also carried bags filled with trick wands and their newest invention, something called a puking pastille. "We'll have a whole line of skiving snackboxees sometime soon," Fred was loudly explaining to an interested Beauxbatons boy when George hissed at him to be quiet.  
  
"Look," George whispered. "Percy. He sees us, he'll tell Mum, and we'll have a Howler by tonight."  
  
Indeed, Percy was seated at the judges' table next to Igor Karkaroff. It seemed that the Ministry still hadn't chosen an official replacement for Barty Crouch as liaison to the Triwizard Tournament.  
  
"Shouldn't have to tiptoe around Percy," muttered Fred. "Too stupid to tell his pet rat was really a dark wizard—"  
  
"Hey!" objected Ron loudly.

"Well, at least you didn't worship your boss who was hiding another dark wizard, Ronniekins," said George. The twins moved deeper into the crowd, putting as many people in between themselves and Percy as possible.  
  
Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked in the other direction to see if there was any chance of getting good seats close to the front of the makeshift stadium. They managed it, but only by squeezing all three of their bodies into a seat meant for one. Hermione ended up balanced on Ron and Harry's laps, but they all agreed that that was a small price to pay for a better view.  
  
They had just settled into an almost comfortable, if ridiculously cramped, position when a small Hufflepuff boy Harry didn't know clambered over to them.  
  
"Harry Potter," the boy said. "Cedric wants to see you."  
  
"Now?" asked Harry, surprised. "I didn't think the champions were allowed to see anyone until after the task."  
  
"He wants to see you," the boy repeated urgently. "You'd better come."  
  
"Maybe you'd better," said Ron. "You did train with him."  
  
Hermione's bushy hair brushed Harry's face as she bobbed her head up and down in agreement. "You'd better go, Harry. Maybe he's allowed to ask for a friend, but not a professor."  
  
Were Harry and Cedric friends? Harry found that he didn't mind the idea at all. Hermione slid from his lap and onto the seat beside Ron, and Harry disentangled himself from the crowd and followed the boy to the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest. He had a difficult time not keeping his mouth from falling open in awe and horror. There, in magically constructed pens, were three very large, very angry dragons.  
  
"Cedric drew the Swedish Short-Snout, he's going first," the boy informed Harry.  
  
"How could you know that?" asked Harry.  
  
"I told him." Karkaroff stepped out of a shadow Harry hadn't even known was there.  
  
"But I just saw you at the judge's table," said Harry.  
  
"And you'd likely see this young Hogwarts student with his friends if you looked. Wonderful thing, polyjuice potion, don't you agree? Poliakoff knows he's to give a ten to Viktor no matter what, and lower scores to the other two. Even he can manage that. I'll erase his memory, and Ganev's—" here he clapped the impostor Hufflepuff boy on the back— "this evening."  
  
"And what about me?" demanded Harry. "What do you want with me?"  
  
"So many things." Karkaroff's mouth curled into an ugly grin. "Wouldn't it be embarrassing for Dumbledore if the Boy Who Lived was caught stowing away on the Hogwarts champion's dragon? The fame obviously went to the boy's head— he couldn't take seeing someone else get the glory."  
  
"No one would believe that!" snapped Harry stupidly, because he knew almost everyone would believe it. He'd heard some of the Hufflepuffs in his year whispering that very thing to one another that first night when Cedric had been chosen as champion and all of the Gryffindors had been openly rooting for Angelina instead.  
  
"Dumbledore and Potter, publicly disgraced and discredited when the Hogwarts champion dies thanks to Potter's actions," Karkaroff continued. "When the Dark Lord arises this summer, no one will want to throw his lot in with either one… We will kill the spare, but I shan't take your life now, your life belongs to the Dark Lord… he has told me, through a piece of himself left behind he has told me…"  
  
Harry stopped listening. Karkaroff was crazy, and even more dangerous than Sirius and Lupin had feared. The only thing to do was leave, and quickly.  
He ran as hard as he could, not caring what direction he took. Even the depths of the Forbidden Forest, he sensed, would be safer than this. And if he ran into the dragon pen as Karkaroff wanted, well, he'd do it in full sight of the dragonologists and no doubt they'd pull him out. They were good at that kind of thing, he had heard Ron's brother Charlie talk about it at the World Cup…  
  
An icy blast hit him in the back and he could no longer see his own hands and feet. They seemed to blend in with his surroundings.  
  
He'd been hit with a disillusionment charm. He wasn't sure how he knew, or why it felt so familiar.  
  
He hadn't ever been hit with a disillusionment charm before, had he?  
  
 _Climb onto the Swedish Short-Snout._  
  
Suddenly, Harry realized that climbing onto the dragon's back was exactly what he wanted to do, and he had no idea why he'd been running away. He stopped so quickly that he almost fell over, then turned around.  
  
 _Walk into the midst of the dragonologists handling the Swedish Short-Snout, but touch none of them._  
  
Harry took another step.  
  
 _Now, behind the Short-Snout's wing._  
  
 _That's a stupid thing to do,_ Harry thought to himself. _I don't want to get anywhere near that dragon, and I certainly don't want to put Cedric in more danger._  
  
He stopped.  
  
 _CLIMB ONTO THE DRAGON! _a voice he now knew was not his own roared into his mind.  
  
"No!" he shouted aloud. _" The Imperius Curse doesn't work on me, Karkaroff!"_  
  
The dragon gave a roar as the dragonologists dragged her off to face Cedric, and Harry knew what he had to do. He had to make it to the next group of dragonologists, handling the next dragon, and shout to them that he was in trouble. He was invisible, but they could hear him. He still had his wand, he drew it to conjure something, anything, to attract their attention. Charlie Weasley must be here somewhere, Charlie would listen—  
  
Harry's wand flew out of his hand and he lost consciousness.

* * *

  
Harry blinked, disoriented. His head hurt and he didn't know why he was here, halfway to the Forest, when the rest of the school and what seemed like half the wizarding population of Britain was packed into the stands and watching the First Task.  
  
Then he remembered. The Hufflepuff boy had dragged him away, had claimed Cedric needed him, but then they had reached the Forbidden Forest and the boy had told him that, really, he had just wanted Harry to miss seeing Cedric compete because a typical Gryffindor had no business trying to steal Cedric's glory.  
  
Harry had known that all of Hufflepuff House took great pride in Cedric's accomplishments— they were tired of being called "a lot o' duffers" as Hagrid had once put it— but this was ridiculous. He jogged back to the over-crowded stands and was able to find Ron and Hermione only because Hermione cast a clever little puff of arrow shaped smoke to guide him. Hermione stood when Harry reached them, and Harry sank gratefully down beside Ron.   
  
With a flicker of concern on her face, Hermione balanced on Ron's knee instead of sitting on both of them as she had before.  
  
"Are you all right Harry? What did Cedric want? He did so well— using the Conjunctivitis Curse to get past the dragon and take the egg was brilliant."  
  
"And that berk Karkaroff only gave him a five," complained Ron.  
  
"I didn't see Cedric," said Harry. "I missed everything. That boy who came to get me— I don't even know his name—"  
  
"That was Zacharias Smith," said Ron. "Ginny knows him, says he's a right tosser."  
  
"He is," said Harry darkly. "He just took me out toward the Forest so I wouldn't be able to watch Cedric compete. Said Gryffindors are glory hogs and I shouldn't be taking attention away from Cedric or something."  
  
"That's ridiculous," said Hermione. "I mean, I know that the other houses say sometimes Gryffindors try to get all the attention, but you've been helping Cedric! You were the first one at our table to stand up for him today."  
  
"We'll deal with him later," Ron decided. "Fleur Delacour is up. Let's watch her, shall we?"  
  
Fleur Delacour fought the dragon as only a part-veela could. She used a charm to lure her dragon into a trance, and it almost worked until the dragon snorted in its sleep and set Fleur's skirts on fire.  
  
Viktor Krum was last. He tried the same tactic as Cedric— a Conjunctivitis Curse. Krum's dragon, though, broke several of her own eggs in a blind rage.   
  
"They'll have to take points for that," said Ron sagely.  
  
When all was said and done, Krum ended the day in first place, but only because Karkaroff had given him a ten even though Cedric had used the same curse more successfully. The whole of Hogwarts now seemed to be firmly united behind Cedric and was unified in its anger at Karkaroff, and even Krum.  
  
"Krum should have refused to accept the score when he knew Cedric was better! He's complicit!" Justin Finch-Fletchley shouted to great approval.

* * *

  
The Great Hall was rowdier than usual at dinner that night. Cedric, of course, was at the center of it all, but he left the Hufflepuff table to seek out Harry.  
  
"Did you see?" he asked Harry, his eyes bright with triumph. "What did you think? Better than the one I cast on you?"  
  
Harry's throat went dry. He didn't want to lie, but he also didn't want to tell Cedric that he hadn't seen. "I… everyone says it was brilliant," he tried.  
  
"I didn't ask what everyone says," Cedric laughed. "I asked what you thought."  
  
"I missed it," Harry admitted, feeling terrible.  
  
"Oh."  
  
"It wasn't his fault," Ginny piped up from Harry's left. "It was Zacharias Smith. He decided Harry shouldn't see it, so he tricked Harry—"  
  
"Stop making things up, _Ginevra_!" growled the boy. Zacharias. He'd been sitting close enough to hear them; of course, everyone wanted to know what Cedric was saying, and to whom, at all times. "I've never spoken to Harry Potter in my life."  
  
"Hermione and I were right there to see it, mate," snapped Ron. "So don't call my sister a liar."  
  
"And Zacharias was with us the whole time," put in a Hufflepuff girl. "So don't call _him_ a liar."  
  
"Maybe no one's lying," said Cedric quickly. "Maybe it was so wild that everyone got a little confused."  
  
Harry wanted to scream from the rooftops that he hadn't been _confused_.  
  
He also didn't want a Hufflepuff-Gryffindor rivalry to match the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry.  
  
And he didn't want to ruin Cedric's big day.  
  
"That must be it," said Harry. "And your dragon didn't even break one egg! I bet you kept it from breaking them on purpose."  
  
"I would have if I could have," said Cedric, and everyone returned to listening to Cedric instead of glaring at one another.  
  


* * *

  
When dinner was over, Harry decided to go to the owlery to visit Hedwig. It would be quiet and peaceful there, and he needed quiet and peace. He stroked Hedwig's snowy white feathers and wondered why Zacharias Smith would have lied, why his head hurt so badly, why his memory of the whole thing didn't feel quite right. He would have doubted his own recollections if Ron and Hermione hadn't been there to back him up.  
  
He said goodbye to Hedwig and had begun the long walk back to the castle when the swish of a broom made him turn his head.  
  
It was Cedric, and he was smiling. Beside him was— of all people— Viktor Krum. "Get your broom, Harry. Join us," Cedric offered.  
  
Harry didn't need to be asked twice. He collected the broom in record time, judiciously using his invisibility cloak to keep anyone from asking where he was going and who he was going with.  
  
Soon he was flying alongside not only Cedric Diggory, but Viktor Krum— Viktor Krum who might have been the best flyer in all the world.  
  
At first they turned quiet circles in the cold, dark November air over the castle and the lake. None of them said anything. Cedric and Krum were still recovering from the Task and Harry… well, Harry wasn't sure what he was, other than glad to be flying again.  
  
Then, without any of them seeming to decide what they were about to do, they began to weave in and out amongst the turrets of the castle. Krum took the lead, and his skill was even more impressive when you were flying in his wake. Cedric was next, not as brilliantly good as Krum, but far above average. And Harry brought up the rear, following them easily and full of sheer joy that made him forget how awful he had felt for most of the day.  
They raced to the Quidditch pitch. Harry knew he would be able to outstrip Cedric, but was thrilled to find himself neck and neck with Krum as they reached the middle of the pitch, and then Krum dove down, down, down…  
  
A Wronski Feint. Hadn't Harry dreamed of trying a Wronski Feint against Viktor Krum since the day of the World Cup?  
  
Harry matched Krum inch for inch. They dove and dove and dove, barely touching the grass before they pulled up again as one.  
  
Krum glanced at Harry for the first time as they began to climb again. "Thank God Ireland didn't have you in the World Cup," he said.  
  
Harry was glad that it was dark, because he felt himself blush.  
  
Cedric had decided not to dive; he was twisting about above them, performing ridiculous loops and generally looking the least dignified Harry had ever seen him.  
  
Harry couldn't help but join in, and, finally, so did Krum.  
  
The night grew colder and colder, and they were shivering by the time they retreated to their beds (past curfew, but Harry had his cloak and no one was going to reprimand either of the champions).  
  
Back in the almost-deserted Gryffindor common room, Harry spent a long time warming himself by the fire and wondering at the strange turns his day had taken.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	27. Tonks Interlude B

The club pulsed with music that didn't quite drown out Tonks' thoughts.  
  
She was fairly certain that she was the the first junior Auror in the history of junior Aurors to resent being pulled into a big takedown by chance, but that came as no surprise. She had never been the quintessential anything.  
  
Thanks to the takedown— which had resulted in half a dozen arrests and a nod of approval from the Minister of Magic himself— she had missed two scheduled classes at Hogwarts. Hogwarts duty was supposed to be routine duty. Hogwarts duty was supposed to bore her.  
  
Hogwarts duty was completely fascinating.  
  
Remus Lupin was completely fascinating. It had only just occurred to her that she might be doing something as ridiculously normal as having a crush on a professor when she'd been pulled from the assignment. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to touch him again. She wanted to check, at least once more, and see if his reaction to her was what she'd thought it was.  
  
It was almost worse that the takedown had resulted in her missing a family dinner. She had always been lucky enough to get along well with her parents, but now that Sirius had returned family dinners truly felt like an event. Something that had been ripped away from them when she'd been a small child had been unexpectedly returned and it was wonderful.  
  
 _He'd shown up riding his flying motorcycle, of course. Her father laughed. Her mother pretended that she wasn't laughing. And she'd run as fast as she could to his side. She would have tripped and fallen if his hands hadn't been quick to grab her around the waist and swing her up high, depositing her astride the bike. He jumped on behind her, smelling of smoke and leather and wildness. His t-shirt was emblazoned with a golden phoenix that she knew meant something more than it seemed._  
  
 _"Where shall we go?" he asked her._  
  
 _"Tahiti!" she cried, because Tahiti was far away and she wanted to see something new. She wanted to see everything new. Her parents were always worried about You-Know-Who (she only sort of knew who) and being safe. She was tired of being safe._  
  
 _"Whatever you say!" He revved the engine._  
  
 _"Turn that off, Sirius," said Andromeda, sounding more like his mother than his cousin._  
  
 _He sighed theatrically. "If you insist, Anna." He was the only one who ever called her mum Anna. To her dad, she was Dromeda; to everyone else, Andromeda._  
  
 _"I do."_  
  
 _"A few more years," he whispered in her ear, while her mother pretended not to notice. "Maybe one weekend when you're at Hogwarts. Things will change soon. They have to. And you and I will celebrate."_  
  
 _Things had changed; he'd been right about that._  
  
 _But he hadn't been there to celebrate. He'd become a subject that she was all but forbidden to mention because it upset her mother so much._  
 _She'd never gotten to ride the motorcycle._  
  
 _She had always had a taste for leather jackets._  
  
She stripped off her leather jacket. It was too hot to wear it inside the club. She used her wand to send it careening onto a hook near the bar, spelled so that no one would dare try to steal it.  
  
The unexpected night off was a reward for the exploding Quaffle arrests. It would have been small compensation for the lost time with her family and her Hogwarts assignment were it not for a wonderful coincidence: somehow, Penny and Tulip were both free to join her.  
  
Tulip's hours at the Department of Mysteries were almost as all-consuming as Tonks' hours with the Aurors. Tulip also had a fiancé who somehow seemed to think that she ought to spend most of her free time with him. Penny, meanwhile, had almost completely left the wizarding world. Tonks didn't doubt that she would have left it behind entirely had it not been for her love of potions. Penny needed to brew potions like other artists needed to paint or sing or write.  
  
Or dance.  
  
 _Saturday night, I feel the air is getting hot_  
 _Like you baby_  
 _I'll make you mine, you know I'll take you to the top_  
 _I'll drive you crazy_  
 _Saturday night, dance, I like the way you move_  
 _Pretty baby_  
 _It's party time and not one minute we can lose_  
 _Be my baby_  
  
Penny might not have agreed to come to any wizarding club other than Marquelle. Luckily, it was Tonks' favorite, too. Marquelle served just as much Muggle beer as it did fire whiskey, and it was just as likely to blast the latest Muggle hits as the Weird Sisters.  
  
All of the Muggle songs seemed to be about love. Wanting, watching, craving, losing.  
  
 _Come back_  
 _Baby come back_  
 _Come back_  
 _Baby come back_  
 _This is the first time today_  
 _That you've run away_  
 _I'm asking you for the first time baby_  
 _Love me you love to stay_  
 _Stay_  
 _Stay_  
 _Stay_  
  
The three of them danced together like they'd done sometimes at Hogwarts. They danced until Tulip's face flushed almost as red as her hair and Penny's long golden plait was sparkling with sweat.  
  
As one, they laughed at each other and withdrew from the dance floor to a table in the corner. Tulip summoned drinks for them while Tonks cast a charm so that they would be able to hear each other over the roar of the music.  
  
Tulip raised her glass to toast Tonks. "To the youngest and already best Auror in the Ministry!" she crowed.  
  
"To Tonks!" added Penny, and they clinked their glasses together.  
  
Tonks was too tired and too happy to feel embarrassed at the attention. The heat and the noise washed over her. The beer was warm and heavy in her stomach.  
  
The moment was perfect even without _him_.  
  
She doubted that _he_ ever came to places like this anyway.  
  
He liked museums, probably. She suspected that he read for fun. But he must have an adventurous side, too, or there was no way that he and Sirius would have been best mates in school. There must be something very, very interesting underneath the flawlessly polite surface of the professor.  
  
Penny swirled her beer in its glass and told them that the process Muggles used to brew it wasn't entirely different from the process of brewing the perfect potion. They even used the same word: brew.  
  
"They have tours where you can see how they do it," Penny concluded.  
  
"I'd like to see that," said Tulip, who always liked to know how everything worked.  
  
"Me too," said Tonks. "If we ever all get a day off together again…"  
  
"You must get your evenings free sometimes with all those days you're spending at Hogwarts," Tulip suggested. "Even if you're on call."  
  
"On call means she's not drinking beer," Penny returned. "Is it strange to be back at Hogwarts?"  
  
"Do you miss us when you're there?" teased Tulip.  
  
"Every time," said Tonks honestly. Penny gave her shoulders a squeeze, and Tulip, who didn't really go in for gushy displays of sentiment, stared at her drink.  
  
"How's the professor you're working with?"  
  
" _Perfect_." The beer might have been more alcoholic than she'd thought it was.  
  
Tulip and Penny looked at each other, then at Tonks, and waggled their eyebrows.  
  
"So," said Tulip after a moment, "you spent seven years of school telling us that having a boyfriend or even a date would slow you down—"  
  
"There was Diego," Penny interrupted. "That lasted almost a year."  
  
"I still say Tonks was only dating him for dueling practice," said Tulip. "He was the best dancer in the school, and you liked dancing with us better than dancing with him."  
  
"That's because you don't correct me when I step on your feet."  
  
Penny laughed. "He was never mean about it, was he?"  
  
Tonks shook her head. "No. He was… exactly what I should have wanted." And he had been. Smart. Kind. Handsome. Hufflepuff.  
  
"There is no 'should have,'" said Penny. "The wizarding world is weird about wanting everyone paired off for life by the time they're fifteen. Some Muggles get married as teenagers, too, but it's fairly unusual anymore."  
  
"This man's a professor," said Tulip. "So he's a lot older than a teenager."  
  
"You don't know that," retorted Penny. "Professor Snape was only in his early twenties when we started school."  
  
"Snape was born old, though," said Tulip dismissively.  
  
"Professor Lupin and Professor Snape were classmates," Tonks told them. "So he's thirteen years older than we are."  
  
Tulip raised her eyebrows. "Penny can tell us all she wants that loads of Muggles don't get married until their thirties, but this man isn't a Muggle. Why isn't he married already?"  
  
"It would have been the height of the war when he finished school. Maybe the person he loved died," Penny proposed.  
  
"Maybe he killed her," Tulip countered.  
  
"Maybe he was caught up in his work. Hardly anyone is really good at teaching Defense, and if he is, he must have had to study and travel—"  
  
"Probably crazy. No one wanted him."  
  
"What do you like about him, Tonks?" asked Penny, pointedly ignoring Tulip.  
  
"Above everything else, I like how kind he is," Tonks decided. "Penny, you know how you always hated that there was so much bullying in school and the teachers went along with it? You should see him with the students who aren't sure of themselves. One way or another, he builds them up. He never tears them down. He told me the other day that he finds a way to make every student a pleasure to teach because it's a disservice to them otherwise."  
  
"Was he a Hufflepuff?"  
  
"Gryffindor, actually, like my cousin Sirius. He fought in the war, he's brave, he's principled, he's smart, he's funny, he's loyal—"  
"Do you know him well enough to know all of that?"  
  
"No," admitted Tonks. "But I'd like to know more. There's something mysterious about him, something controlled, and it would be fun to see him lose that control."  
  
"I know we always liked to cause a little trouble in school," said Tulip. "But even _I'm _pretty sure that you can't say that to him. After everything you went through to become an Auror, you can't make a move on him at all."  
  
"But she _can_ drop hints." Penny's blue eyes sparkled. "I read in the Daily Prophet that they're having a Yule Ball to go along with the Death Tournament or whatever it's called. The next time you're in class with him, get the students to talk about who's taking who. Turn the subject to romance."  
  
"That's good, Penny," said Tulip appreciatively. "Were you always this sneaky?"  
  
"I don't call it being sneaky. I call it giving love every chance. It's no different from making sure the decorations for the Celestial Ball when we were fourth years was perfect so everyone could have the best time."  
  
Tonks smiled at the memory. Penny had taken such pride in the Celestial Ball decorations. At the time, Penny had driven Tonks mad with her obsession, but now it was one of Tonks' favorite memories of Penny. The next year, Penny's younger sister had been trapped in a magical portrait on her first day at Hogwarts— and Penny had never quite forgiven the school for not doing more to protect Beatrice. No wonder she insisted on styling the Triwizard Tournament the _Death Tournament._  
  
They talked about school and work and their friends and families until the club closed.

  
The next time Tonks was scheduled to visit Hogwarts, she strolled into class with her plan in mind. Conveniently, it was the sixth years' turn for an anti-Imperius lesson. Most of them would have chosen dates rather than attending the Yule Ball with a group of friends. She beamed at the students as she bounded into the room.  
  
"I have an idea, Professor," she told Lupin.  
  
"By all means," he replied, looking amused and gesturing that she should share.  
  
"Today, everyone who goes under the curse should have to dance or write the name of their Yule Ball date on the chalkboard, then draw a heart around it."  
  
This was greeted by a chorus of chuckles from the students, as well as a few concerned looks.  
  
"You are all going to the Yule Ball, aren't you?" she asked them. They agreed that they were. "Cedric, who are you taking?"  
  
"Cho Chang," said Cedric quickly. He managed not to blush. "From Ravenclaw."  
  
"Cedric has to lead the Ball because he's a champion," chimed in one of the other Hufflepuffs.  
  
"Roger, too," added a Ravenclaw. "Because he's going with Fleur Delacour."  
  
A murmur ran through the class. Apparently this was fresh new gossip. "How did that happen, Davies?" asked one of the Weasley twins.  
  
"I don't know," admitted Roger Davies.  
  
"What about Krum, though?" chimed in Alicia Spinnet. "Who's he taking? Someone from Durmstrang or someone from Hogwarts? I heard that the Beauxbatons girls all promised not to go with him out of solidarity with their champion."  
  
"Does that mean Davies should have turned down Fleur Delacour to support Diggory?" snorted one of the boys.  
  
"It's fine with me," said Cedric mildly.  
  
"You and Krum get on well enough. Who's he taking?"  
  
"No idea," said Cedric.  
  
"He should just choose someone. Then that pack of girls would stop following him around," said Alicia.  
  
"Alicia, he likes having the pack of girls follow him around!" said Lee.  
  
"Seems like it would get annoying," said Alicia.  
  
"Or else he just wants to go alone," Tonks suggested. "I always liked to go to the dances alone. No one could really keep up with me. I dated the best dancer in the school for a year, but I always had more fun with my friends." She glanced at Lupin. "What about you, Professor?"  
  
"My school days are so far in the distant past that I can't recall if we even had dances back then," said Lupin mildly.  
  
The students rounded on their professor and booed.  
  
"Come on, Professor," pushed Fred Weasley. "My parents always tell these revolting stories about sneaking off into the bushes to be alone during the balls. They're older than you are. You have to have gone to at least one."  
  
"I don't recall," said Lupin, a slight smile fixed on his face. "And the next person who asks will find himself or herself under the Imperius Curse."  
  
Angelina Johnson jumped to her feet, her long braids swinging out behind her like a curtain. "Tell us about your Hogwarts girlfriend, Professor," she challenged.  
  
He pointed his wand. " _Imperio_!"  
  
Angelina walked to the center of the room. Tonks didn't know what Lupin asked her to do, but she could tell that Angelina wasn't going to do it.  
  
"No," said Angelina faintly. "No! _No_!"  
  
Tonks almost felt it when the curse snapped and burst into applause. The rest of the class followed suit.  
  
"Good, Angelina. Very, very good!" shouted Lupin.  
  
"Angelina, want to come to the ball with me?" called out Fred Weasley.  
  
Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look. "All right, then," she said, and she sat down next to Alicia.  
  
Angelina's success seemed to start a chain reaction. To Tonks' delight, Cedric broke the curse next. Before the end of the class, Lee and Alicia had managed it as well. Everyone was smiling broadly as the students left.  
  
Alone with Lupin, Tonks decided that it was time to be less subtle. Subtlety had never been her strong point, anyway. "Why wouldn't you tell them about the dances you went to when you were in school?" she asked. "Students love to hear stories like that about their professors, especially the young professors."  
  
"I didn't date when I was in school." He snapped his briefcase shut. "That would be of no interest to the students, or else they'd feel so terribly sorry for me that they wouldn't be able to concentrate."  
  
He left quickly, and this time she had no way of getting herself invited to his office.  
  
There was only one person who could help her now.

  
She jogged to the edge of campus, barely remembering to slow down as she passed the Durmstrang boat to remind Karkaroff that he was being watched, and Apparated to the front step of Sirius' house in Hogsmeade.  
  
She found Sirius getting ready to go out.  
  
"But I have to talk to you," she told him.  
  
"I will show up at Anna's next dinner party," he said.  
  
"Not about that. Though, yes, you shouldn't try Mum about that."  
  
"Come with me," he offered, extending his hand. "We'll talk there."  
  
She didn't bother asking where "there" happened to be. Mad-Eye would have had a fit.  
  
A quick pop of Apparition later, she opened her eyes to see the sort of London street that always looked dark even on sunny summer days. On a gray December day, it looked all the more foreboding.  
  
She realized where they were half a second before Sirius made the invisible door appear. " _This is Grimmauld Place," _she breathed. Her mother had mentioned it more than once over the years, and she'd had to discuss her non-existent knowledge of it during her Auror aptitude tests, but she'd never actually seen it.  
  
It was as dark and disgusting as she had imagined. "Wow," she said.  
  
"I'd keep my wand out if I were you," he said, and she drew her wand obediently.  
  
"Why are we here?"  
  
"I didn't take everything I had when I ran away from home," he said. "I think my parents probably threw anything I left behind away, but I've never really looked. Maybe they kept something in case they needed it to cast a curse on me."  
  
He bounded up the stairs two at a time, and she followed him, glancing around interestedly. This was her history. This was her horrible, brutal, cruel history.  
  
Or rather, it wasn't. It was her not-history that was so close to being her history that it almost was her history, just not the way it was her mother's history and Sirius' history.  
  
"Are we looking for anything in particular?" she asked.  
  
"Harry doesn't have much from his parents. James' and my lives were so tangled up back then that I might have had something of his… or even photographs… I know there's one on my old bedroom wall, but I used a permanent sticking charm so good that I can't break it myself."  
  
"So this is Christmas shopping, Black style."  
  
"Unfortunately." He led her into the bedroom that had obviously been his and wasted no time digging through the wardrobe.  
  
As he had said, there was one photograph stuck to the wall amongst the motorcycles and bikini-clad women. She wandered over to the photograph and couldn't help reaching out to touch the image of a younger Remus Lupin, standing beside Sirius and James Potter and Peter Pettigrew.  
  
"Nothing in there," Sirius declared. "They cleaned it out. Either they burned everything, in which case we won't find it, or they put it in the attic, in which case we're only slightly more likely to find it." She nodded, still distracted by the image on the wall. The four boys looked so happy. "What are you staring at that for?"  
  
"Did Professor Lupin have a girlfriend when you were at school?" she blurted out.  
  
Sirius didn't seem to think it was an odd question. "Nah. Always had his nose in a book."  
  
"Does he not like girls— women?" she asked. She should have considered that sooner.  
  
This time, Sirius laughed. "There always were rumors about him and me. Have those started up again?"  
  
"I haven't heard anything. So was it true?"  
  
"No. Remus likes women. He's just… very particular. Wouldn't go in for anything casual."  
  
"Was he pining after someone he couldn't have? Was it— Harry's mum? He loved her but she loved his friend and he still carries a torch for her years after she died?"  
  
"No," said Sirius for the third time. "The one carrying a torch for Lily was Snivellus Snape, if you can believe that."  
  
She snorted with surprise and laughter and Sirius looked pleased with himself.  
  
"Don't repeat that to Harry. There are some things a boy doesn't need to know about his mother. I'm sure old Snivelly is over it by now, though. He wouldn't be such a piece of shit to the boy Lily gave her life to save if he still had feelings for her. Why all the questions about Remus?"  
  
"I was at Hogwarts today and the students were talking about the Yule Ball. He wouldn't say anything about the balls when he was in school."  
  
Sirius shrugged. "He didn't like them much. Nor did I, come to that. No wonder there were rumors. Besides, we're both far too old to remember anything about what went on at balls twenty years ago."  
  
It was the second time that Sirius and Lupin had given her the exact same non-answer to a perfectly innocent question about their past.  
  
Sirius wasn't going to be of any help at all.  
  
"All right, then," she agreed. "Let's search the attic."

* * *

  
The attic was a dusty tangle of old clothes, older furniture, and a particularly vile boggart that insisted on turning into Bellatrix Lestrange. Tonks wasn't certain whether the boggart had been aiming for her or for Sirius initially, but it got enough of a reaction from both of them that it didn't bother changing forms. They'd taken turns dressing the boggart in progressively fluffier outfits— by the end, she'd been dressed up like a pink bunny— but it was still a rather unpleasant diversion.  
  
Tonks couldn't help but be fascinated by the schoolroom set up at the far end of the attic. "Mum mentioned this to me," she told Sirius. "She hated it."  
"We all did. Standing up and reciting the Sacred 28 backwards and forwards. Latin and French drilled into our skulls and not being able to move until we'd been at it for hours. So much astronomy we could have taught the classes at Hogwarts. And of course the daily dose of pureblood mania." He scowled at the memory. "We aren't going to find anything useful. Let's go."  
  
As they trooped back down the stairs, a sign caught Tonks' eye:  
  
 _Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black_  
  
"We should check in here," she said.  
  
"There wouldn't be anything in there."  
  
"Maybe… maybe after you left, he wanted something to remember you by. You were brothers, and you went through that whole crazy schoolroom thing together. You must have been close once."  
  
"Close once, but that was over by the time I was eleven years old and got myself sorted into Gryffindor. Regulus was a Death Eater. He'd rather have killed me than kept souvenirs from our childhood. Does your mother keep tokens of Bellatrix Lestrange around your house?" asked Sirius sharply.  
  
"She has photographs," said Tonks. "And there's a necklace that has her name wrapped up with Bellatrix's and Narcissa's. It must have been one of a set of three originally. Dad hates that she has it, but he doesn't tell her. I'll look, if you don't want to."  
  
She'd meant it as an offer, not a challenge, but of course Sirius thought she was taunting him and threw open the door. She took up a defensive stance behind him; if that door hadn't been opened in a decade, they might meet something far worse than an ornery boggart.  
  
The room turned out to be no more dangerous than a deserted Slytherin dormitory. (Regulus had been barely out of school when he'd died, Tonks recalled.) The drawers were full of quills, textbooks, and ink bottles. Everything was green and silver. Like Sirius, Regulus had decorated his wall with a picture of his school friends; in Regulus' case the photograph featured the Slytherin Quidditch team. Regulus had also, Tonks noticed with distaste, saved a number of newspaper articles which spoke of the Death Eaters and their leader in glowing terms.  
  
"I told you he was a Death Eater," said Sirius.  
  
"But he was so young." She'd always known it. It seemed more real now that she stood in his childhood bedroom.  
  
"Old enough to know better," said Sirius. "As old as you were when you decided to be an Auror and risk your neck for what you believed in."  
  
She couldn't argue with that.  
  
They knelt together to look through the wardrobe. "It has a false bottom," Tonks determined. Before she could contemplate what spell would work best, Sirius reached around her and flipped the hidden compartment open manually. "I'm surprised that anything in this house opens without magic," she said.  
  
"Not very much does," confirmed Sirius as he dragged the wardrobe's contents into the light.  
  
There were a few Zonko's tricks: an ancient dungbomb and an auto-answer quill. There was a receipt that showed that Regulus had purchased a new wand at Ollivander's not long before his death. Most of the space, though, was given over to a collection of pornography.  
  
She'd seen worse as an Auror. She flipped through the pile doggedly.  
  
"You're in an eighteen-year-old boy's room," said Sirius. "There's nothing secret about what an eighteen-year-old boy does with magazines like that."  
  
A cache of photographs tumbled from one of the magazines to the floor. Sirius huffed slightly, and Tonks determined that it was not the time to gloat.  
  
The first few photographs were of Regulus and his family. Regulus and Sirius as tiny boys standing in a crib. Regulus and Sirius posed with their parents. Regulus and Sirius posed with their cousins. As always, it was slightly sickening to see how difficult it was to tell Bellatrix from Andromeda.  
  
The next set of photographs were of Sirius. Sirius and James, no older than twelve, riding a broom together. Sirius and James eating ice cream. Sirius and James pretending to duel. Sirius and James and Lupin and Pettigrew building a house of cards with an Exploding Snap pack.  
  
The photographs told the story of a boy who had traded one brother for another. Who had traded one family for another. She admired Sirius for his nerve and his moral compass, but she wondered if Regulus had grieved as he'd been left behind.  
  
"He hid his pictures of you when your parents purged everything," she concluded.  
  
"He forgot they were there," Sirius countered.  
  
She didn't argue. Instead, she changed the subject. "Do you remember how long that house of cards lasted before it exploded in all of your faces?"  
  
"About one second after James' dad took that picture." With an effort, Sirius climbed to his feet and tucked the photographs into his pocket. "Thank you, Tonks."  
  
As they left the house, her mind swam, not for the first time, with the complexities of her history. Her horrible, brutal, cruel history. Her not-history that was so close to being her history that it almost was her history.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Lyrics are from Saturday Night by Whigfield, number one in the UK for 4 weeks in September-October 1994; and Pato Banton's cover of Baby Come Back, number one in the UK for 4 weeks in October-November 1994.


	28. Sirius, Trying

_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_It is my duty to warn you that my darling mini-cousin Nymphadora appears to have fallen prey to your alleged charms. She asked me today about your dating history and sexual inclinations. She seems to think that I was unaware of what she was asking and why, but she is as subtle as a swelling curse to the face._   
  
_I understand that her attentions are not reciprocated in light of your having a secret not-wife. However, please be very, very kind to her. After all, she is an Auror and could probably feed you to the giant squid._   
  
_If the opportunity arises, I will explain to her that she is capable of doing much better._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_I have no intention of being anything but kind to your darling mini-cousin. I am very fond of her and always look forward to seeing her._   
  
_I quite agree that she is capable of doing much better, but I don't recommend telling her something so obvious. It would only make her dig her heels in harder— insist that she doesn't want someone young and rich and handsome and healthy._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_As you have a secret not-wife and an un-conceived child, I am a bit perplexed as to why you would explain to me that you are not good enough for Tonks using stupid and untrue arguments._   
  
_If you were interested in my cousin, I would tell you that young and rich and handsome and healthy are none of them guarantees of anything. I was once all four, and would have made a terrible boyfriend. Did, occasionally._   
  
_I would also tell you that I love Tonks and that I couldn't choose anyone better for her than you. I was, in fact, pleased by the thought when I first saw her swooning over an old photograph of you. (You know the one. The four of us, end of fifth year, all of us looking at the camera like normal people for once.)_   
  
_It's time for a little honesty. Tell me yes or no._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Cousin Padfoot,_   
  
_Yes. Do not interfere. Please._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Cousin Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_I have so many things to tell you._   
  
_Don't worry. If all goes well, you'll both be old eventually. No one will snicker when she's 100 and you're 113._   
  
_Try not think about how she was born during the winter holidays our third year at Hogwarts. You know, the year that we snuck out to that Muggle movie with all the sex in it. When she was an infant._   
  
_Also try not to think about how I used to dance with her mother at Very Exclusive Pureblood Events when we were children._   
  
_Really, really, really try not to think about how her father was a prefect when we were at school and at least once let us out of detention when he shouldn't have._   
  
_Try not to remember that Severus Snape was her Potions professor when she was at school. Your classmate was her professor. I do not suggest that you ask him to tell you about all the times that she was a very bad girl._   
  
_Do not suddenly start spelling the gray out of your hair. It won't make people think you're her age._   
  
_Also, do not start wearing flannel shirts and oversized trainers. That won't make people think you're her age, either._   
  
_Don't try giving her a curfew. She's a Metamorphmagus, she'll find a way around it._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_Are you quite through?_   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_I haven't even started yet. Can't wait to see you in person. December 18?_   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_Don't you have something productive you could be doing? Meeting with Félicité?_   
  
_Yes, December 18. December 18 is also the last day of the term. If Harry wants to spend the winter holidays with you, visiting with me that night may not be practical._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_Do not attempt to get out of the conversation we are going to have. Has Harry not decided whether he is staying at school? I thought almost everyone would stay for the Yule Ball._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_I don't know what Harry has decided. Take out your mirror and ask him._   
  
_Also, I noticed that you ignored my comment about Félicité._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_If you won't walk over to Harry to ask him if he's staying over the holidays, you'll have extra time to walk over to the Beauxbatons carriage and ask Félicité yourself._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_Félicité won't/can't talk to me about you—thinks it would be disrespectful of your privacy._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_That's quite nice, really. It's entirely possible that Félicité is working for the Ministry or Voldemort or any of the myriad people who hate me and so she's trying to lull me into a false sense of security by telling you how much she respects my privacy. But it's a nice thought._   
  
_I have met with her. I found the whole thing very silly and it doesn't help, but I'll do it a few more times if it shuts you up and means I tried everything it's reasonable for me try to be what Harry needs._   
  
_To be sure, she did not ask me to tell her anything about what I was thinking. She only asked me to tell her how distressing the memory was at any given time. She asked me to focus on a terrible memory while she made a vibrating ball jump back and forth between my hands. She claims that Muggles call it le trouble de stress post-traumatique when you've experienced something terrible and can't stop thinking about it. (According to that definition, shouldn't everyone we know have le trouble de stress post-traumatique? Including Harry and his friends?)_   
  
_The Muggles call this treatment EMDR, meaning Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Of course I refused to move my eyes because if hypnosis is real I don't want it to happen. So instead of the eye movement she's doing this buzzing thing._   
  
_She's interesting. I don't mind the entertainment value of seeing her every so often. Her belief that Muggle EMDR might be effective is right up there with Arthur Weasley and his collection of Muggle technology._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_I talked to Harry today. He can't decide whether to put his name down to stay at school or not. This is the first time he's had a valid alternative to staying, but also the first time that there's a reason to stay._   
  
_I told him that he could see you either way (as if he needed telling to go sneaking around with that invisibility cloak) and that he could attend the Yule Ball either way (easy enough for you to take him up to the school for one night)._   
  
_How completely are you planning to spoil him? You showed remarkable restraint on his birthday._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_Thank you for the godson update._   
  
_I bought him a gold cauldron._   
  
_I don't know why._   
  
_He doesn't need a gold cauldron. No one needs a gold cauldron. I grew up hating those showy, ostentatious things that no one needs. You know I'd rather have a glass I stole from the Three Broomsticks than a goblin-made silver goblet._   
  
_But the cauldron was shining in the window and I wanted Harry to have the best._   
  
_And you must admit that Snivellus seeing it and knowing who must have bought it would be wonderful._   
  
_Other than that I have behaved myself. A knife, sweets, owl treats for Hedwig, clothes, Quidditch books. (If I were going to get him Defense Against the Dark Arts books, which ones? I'll put your name on that present if you tell me.)_   
  
_I went to Grimmauld Place and managed to find a few very old pictures of James. Regulus must have taken them from my room after I left and then forgotten to have a ceremonial burning before he got himself killed._   
  
_I had the best of the pictures— the only one of all four of us— copied for you. See enclosed. I leave it to you to decide whether to spell Pettigrew out of it._   
  
_Do you have any photographs of James or Lily for Harry that you didn't already give him? I assume that most of the pictures in that album of his came from you, but they're all of Lily and James as adults._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_   
  
_When I see you in person, I'll tell you why it's funny that you suggest the Defense books as a Christmas present. For now, I'll just tell you to get the set by Mizrabel Nieminen._   
  
_Thank you for the photograph. I think my old school trunk is in my father's cellar and I think there are photographs in there. After you went to Azkaban I couldn't look at pictures of you but I don't believe I destroyed them. Almost every picture of James when he was younger was also a picture of you. I can't get to them before the holidays, but you have my blessing to go and look. I'll write my father to warn him._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Moony_

* * *

  
_Dear Mr. Moony,_   
  
_Your dad likes me now, remember? You didn't need to "warn" him._   
  
_I had lunch with Lyall today. There was nothing of note in your old trunk. None of us were very good about holding onto those things. I don't suppose many teenage boys are. Harry may be the exception because for most of his life he had so little._   
  
_However, your mum was good at holding onto those things and your dad found her albums for me. She had the entire set of posed photographs James' parents had taken of all four of us right before seventh year. I remember sitting for them, but I don't remember ever seeing them after they'd been developed. That year went by so quickly. There are also some from when James visited you one summer. I think Harry will like those._   
  
_I did not destroy the ones from when Peter visited you, though I was tempted. I was also annoyed all over again that he got to visit you and I didn't. My parents wouldn't have stood for it, they barely tolerated my visiting James, and Lyall all but confirmed that he wouldn't have allowed me to visit if I had lied and told my parents I was elsewhere._   
  
_All of this reminiscing reminded me that I'd forgotten to check the flat where I was living in 1981. It was still there and the landlord had kept a record book that showed that everything in my flat was seized by the Ministry that November. When they closed my case, they returned everything to my last known residence, that building… and the landlord threw it in the basement and forgot about it. There wasn't much; I barely lived there. But I did find a letter Lily wrote to me thanking me for sending Harry a broomstick for his first birthday. There's a picture too._   
  
_It's horrible, Moony. Harry's flying around the room like he was born on that broom. James is chasing after him. Lily's laughing at them. In the letter, she talks about how "Wormy" visited and "seemed down."_   
  
_I'll give it to Harry, but not on Christmas. It's a bit of a mood killer._   
  
_Regards,_   
_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

  
That night, Sirius dreamed that he was fighting for his life. He was pinned down, wandless, frantic to push the knife away from his throat.  
  
He was also the one holding the knife, scrambling to put an end to it all.  
  
When he awoke, chest tight and heart pounding, he wished that he weren't alone. Then he was furious that he wished he weren't alone. He hadn't exactly been the sort of child who'd run to his parents when he'd had a bad dream. Even if he had been, he was no longer a child. He imagined, just for a second, telling Anna or Moony what he'd dreamed.  
  
In his mind's eye, Remus and Andromeda stood side by side, perplexed that he would even ask for… what? Comfort?  
  
Then they looked at him with disgust.  
  
He wondered how long it would be before he could breathe properly.  
  
He remembered the first night after he'd left Grimmauld Place for good. He'd stayed in James' room. There were plenty of other rooms in Potter Manor, and he'd gotten one of his own within the week when it had been officially decided that the Potters would keep him, but that night he'd been with James.  
  
 _James had fallen asleep and stayed asleep as if nothing in his life had been upended. Sirius had grown more and more frustrated with James' snores and had finally slunk from the room on quiet feet. He was used to sneaking about Grimmauld Place without attracting the attention of his parents, or his nosy brother, or the nosier house-elf. He could certainly sneak about Potter Manor just as easily._  
  
 _How he didn't notice the light in the front room of the house, he would never know. All he ever knew was that Euphemia Potter saw him before he saw her and that she didn't make him explain himself._  
  
 _"Sirius, what's an 8-letter word that means 'flatly, without dissembling?' First letter is O."_  
  
 _That was the last thing Sirius had expected her to ask. "Are you doing a crossword puzzle?" he inquired stupidly._  
  
 _"The new_ Daily Prophet _will be here in a few hours," she explained. "I have to finish this one before that one arrives, don't I?"_  
  
 _His mind still muddied by the excitement of the day, Sirius couldn't help but find that explanation perfectly reasonable._  
  
 _He looked over Euphemia's shoulder at the puzzle. "Outright," he answered._  
  
 _She smiled at him as if he were very clever and filled in the boxes before they could shift._  
  
 _He wondered what it would have been like to have been smiled at like that every day for all of his life. James knew, of course, and so did Remus and even Peter._  
  
 _He wondered whether fate was having a laugh at him when the next answer turned out to be "acrimony."_  
  
 _By the time they'd finished the puzzle, he felt so much calmer that he thought he might make it through the night without doing anything stupid._  
  
He'd always had a fondness for crossword puzzles after that. James made no pretense of finding them remotely interesting, and so Euphemia would tell Sirius about the clever clue she'd come across that day. And Sirius was the one who found a book of crosswords in his Christmas package every year until Euphemia's death.  
  
Remus didn't know the whole of the story, but he had known enough to give Sirius a book of crossword puzzles when he'd been released from Azkaban.  
  
Sirius found the book and a self-inking quill.  
  
He did the crossword puzzle until he could read.  
  
He read until he could breathe without pain in his chest.  
  
He breathed until he could sleep.  
  
He slept for two more hours until sunlight streamed through his window. When he arose, he was torn between pride and self-loathing that this was what now constituted a triumph in his life.  
  


* * *

  
For the rest of the day, Sirius was too disoriented to do much of anything. He was considering going to the Hog's Head (he didn't need the looks Rosmerta would give him at the Three Broomsticks) when his mirror flared to life.  
  
"Hi, Harry," he said, hoping that Harry wouldn't be able to tell what kind of day he'd had.  
  
"Hi, Sirius." No, Harry was distracted and nervous. He wasn't going to notice anything about anything.  
  
"Harry?" Sirius pushed when Harry was quiet for far too long.  
  
"Sirius, explain girls to me."  
  
"If I could explain girls, I'd be rich."  
  
"You _are_ rich."  
  
"I'd be richer."  
  
"You're not helping."  
  
He wasn't, it was true. "I might be able to help if you'd tell me a little bit more about what happened today."  
  
Harry looked pained. Sirius remembered the expression well. It was the one James always wore when Lily called him an arrogant toerag. (The pained expression came after the furious expression and before the scheming expression.)  
  
"Did a girl call you an arrogant toerag?" Sirius prompted when Harry remained silent.  
  
"What? No. She asked if I wanted to go to the Yule Ball with her friend so we could all…" Harry made a frustrated gesture with his hand. "Do whatever people do at Yule Balls."  
  
"They dance, I believe," said Sirius.  
  
"I don't dance," said Harry firmly.  
  
"They also eat and talk. You do those things."  
  
Harry shrugged. "Not with Marietta Edgecombe, I don't."  
  
"Who is Marietta Edgecombe?"  
  
"She's Cho Chang's best friend." Harry sighed. "They're in Ravenclaw. They're a year older than I am. Cho is the Seeker on Raveclaw's Quidditch team. She's… pretty."  
  
"You asked the pretty girl to the Ball, she told you that she already had a date, and she suggested that you go with her friend?"  
  
"Because she's going with Cedric," said Harry. "She said that since Cedric and I are mates, it would be good if her friend went with his friend. It was horrible, Sirius!"  
  
"What did you say?" asked Sirius.  
  
"I said that I'd heard someone else fancied Marietta and I didn't want to get in the way of that."  
  
"That's an excellent lie," said Sirius approvingly.  
  
"It really was," agreed Harry. "I just wish I hadn't had to use it."  
  
"What's the plan now?"  
  
"I've always stayed at Hogwarts over Christmas before," said Harry. "I don't think the Dursleys would have picked me up at the train station if I'd tried to visit them."  
  
"I would pick you up at the train station," said Sirius hastily. "But I suppose I wouldn't need to since the last night of the term is also the full moon and I'd be at the school anyway."  
  
"Would it be strange? Me staying when everyone else leaves, and leaving when everyone else stays?" Harry didn't wait for an answer. "I just want a normal Christmas, whatever that is."  
  
"I wish I knew," said Sirius honestly. "But I don't know that I've ever had one either. I mostly just think of what my mum would have done and then do the opposite." Harry laughed. "Unless, of course, I'm doing a permanent sticking charm. Mum's permanent sticking charms were excellent."  
  
"Would it really be okay with you if I came to stay with you over the holiday?"  
  
"Of course!" _It's only the thing I want more than anything else in the world, but don't let me pressure you, Harry._  
  
"You wouldn't care if I didn't go to the Yule Ball after you bought me dress robes?"  
  
"You may not have noticed, but I hate dress robes." Harry laughed again. "I wouldn't blame you for refusing to wear them."  
  
"I really don't want to go," Harry admitted. "I don't want to dance. I only asked Cho because…" Harry didn't appear to want to articulate why he'd asked Cho.  
  
"I quite understand," said Sirius. "Tell everyone that it's your ailing godfather's first proper Christmas in years and that you need to take care of him, and that it's a good job you didn't have a date when you learned how terribly off the poor fellow is, because you'd have to cancel otherwise."  
  
"I don't think anyone cares whether I go."  
  
"Ron and Hermione?"  
  
"Oh, Hermione has a secret date and Ron's angry that she won't tell who it is. They definitely won't notice whether I'm there or not."  
  
"Well, if you change your mind we can always head back to the school on the night of the ball. Until then, we'll just try to do normal."  
  
"Whatever that is."  
  
 _Whatever that is, indeed._  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	29. The December Moon

For once, the full moon came at a convenient time: the last day of classes before the Christmas holiday. None of the students were likely to notice or care if Remus vanished for a few days, and there would be no work to catch up on when he recovered. He would be in good shape for the holiday itself— not that he was entirely looking forward to chaperoning the Yule Ball. The thought of that was almost enough to make him wish for a Christmas full moon.  
  
Professor McGonagall grabbed his arm at breakfast that morning. "Make certain you say goodbye to Simona MacAlastair," she murmured. "Her family hasn't decided whether she's to return after the holiday, and I believe you're the only professor she actually likes."  
  
Remus flinched. Most first years' homesickness had long since abated. Simona, though, had only grown more pale and withdrawn as the months had worn on. He instinctively looked for the little girl near the end of the Gryffindor table where the first years clustered.  
  
"You won't find her there. She's all but stopped eating," said McGonagall.  
  
"Have you any idea why she hasn't adjusted?" he asked.  
  
"Sometimes eleven is simply too young." Her voice was crisp and detached, but Remus could hear that there was real disappointment beneath it. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'd paid extra attention to the first year Gryffindors in general and Simona in particular. She hadn't done more for Simona because there was nothing more to be done.  
  
"Does it happen often?" he asked. He didn't think he recalled any of his own classmates leaving school so early, and certainly no such thing had happened during his first year of teaching. He let his eyes fall on Namrata Vemulakonda and Margarita Jewell: Simona's loud, lively, bickering roommates. He'd seen them hover protectively around Simona more than once. He'd hoped they would be her James and Sirius.  
  
He reminded himself to try not to project his own school experiences onto his students.  
  
"Once every ten years, I'd say," McGonagall was answering. "Perhaps once in five in the days when classes were larger. Most students want to be here, but no school is the perfect fit for every child. Not even this one."  
  
Remus thought of Hogwarts with its constantly adjusting corridors and staircases, and its Room of Requirement, and its vast library and grounds.  
He found it hard to believe that Hogwarts couldn't magically make itself a perfect fit for Simona.

* * *

  
The first-year Gryffindors' final class of the day was Potions, and since Remus had to check in with Snape anyway he made certain to be early to his meeting. He pulled Simona from the line of students as they exited. He told her that she had been a pleasure to teach and that he hoped that she would decide to return, but that he wished her well in whatever she did. Simona whispered a thank you and rushed on after her classmates, red-eyed and hunched over her books.  
  
"House of the brave," muttered Snape dourly as he swept from the classroom to his office.  
  
"Have you ever had a student fail to adjust so completely?" Remus asked, falling into step beside his old rival.  
  
"Never," said Snape.  
  
Remus supposed it might have been true if, as McGonagall said, only one student in a decade didn't last through the first year. That morning, the number had seemed impossibly many; now it seemed impossibly few.  
  
Snape handed him the goblet of potion. Remus willed himself not to shudder as he drank it.  
  
"Safe for another month," said Snape. His dark eyes flashed with suspicion. "I suppose it's better that the MacAlastair girl never found out that her favorite professor is a werewolf. We'd have had to send her home to her family in a box after she died of fright."  
  
"Either way, one less Gryffindor to irritate you, I suppose," Remus replied as he returned the goblet.  
  
"She was less irritating than some. Quieter, except for the constant sniffling. You can't brew a decent potion if you're always crying into it."  
  
"You have no compassion for her, Severus?"  
  
"I save my compassion for the students who need it. For instance, the ones who were mauled by a bloodthirsty monster because he didn't lock himself in his office in a timely manner."  
  
"Have a pleasant evening, Severus, and a relaxing start to the holiday," said Remus. He didn't bother to point out that Snape had just implied that his potion was insufficient to keep the bloodthirsty monster at bay whether he locked himself in his office with his own personal guard dog or not.

* * *

  
He opened his office door to find Sirius waiting for him.  
  
"You look awful," said Sirius pleasantly. "Haven't seduced any inappropriately young Aurors lately?"  
  
 _Of course. _Sirius had been waiting for this moment, but Remus wasn't in much of a mood to play along.  
  
"There's a first year who has been so homesick for the past fourteen weeks that she's unlikely to return to the school after the holidays. I liked her and I'd hoped that she'd find her place here."  
  
Sirius schooled his features into an expression of mock horror. "If she's a first year, she's only eleven years old. Now, Nymphadora is young, but eleven, Remus?"  
  
"Don't be disgusting."  
  
"So Nymphadora is only about ten years older than this girl. Remind me how many years older than Nymphadora you are?"  
  
Sirius wasn't wrong. Dora was closer in age to little Simona, who wasn't much more than a baby, than she was was to Remus.  
  
Remus dearly wanted to tell Sirius to shut up, but Sirius had come here to take care of him, and Sirius had been remarkably level-headed about the revelation that Remus was in love with his baby cousin, and Sirius had survived a living hell…  
  
He would bite his lip and let Sirius make jokes.  
  
As usual, the tray of food was sitting on his table. As usual, he ignored it and offered it to Sirius. Time Sirius spent chewing would be time Sirius didn't spend talking (to some extent, at least).  
  
"They didn't serve fish and chips here when we were in school," Sirius observed, picking at the food interestedly. "It was considered too Muggle."  
  
"I suppose we've made some progress since that time."  
  
"Or they cleaned out the Black Lake and they had to do something with what they found." He grinned wickedly. "You have to send word the minute they serve calamari in the Great Hall. I have a score to settle with the Giant Squid."  
  
Remus' stomach lurched and he tried to settle it with a sip of pumpkin juice. He quickly wished he hadn't. The juice mixed unpleasantly with the aftertaste of the Wolfsbane Potion.  
  
"Can I stay human this time?" asked Sirius around a mouthful of fried fish. He appeared to have found it to his liking regardless of his theories about its dubious origin.  
  
"No."  
  
"I promise not to say anything about your not-wife when you can't say anything back."  
  
"No," Remus repeated.  
  
"I did some research, you know. The rule is that you divide your own age by two and then add seven. So seventeen plus seven is twenty-four, and she won't be twenty-two until the end of the month…"  
  
Remus ignored him and stripped off his robes. He forced himself to remember that Sirius was the one who had _bought_ these robes, how honestly and cheerfully the present had been given.  
  
"Don't worry, Moony," continued Sirius. "I've never been much for following rules. It's okay if you don't want to follow that one."  
  
He was almost grateful when the change burned its way through him. In wolf form, he had an excuse to hit Sirius as much as he liked under the guise of "wrestling."  
  
He was so shocked when he realized that he was _enjoying_ the wolf's power that he froze mid-tussle. Sirius flipped him onto his back and barked triumphantly, wagging his tail and grinning his doggy grin.  
  
Sirius looked stupid.  
  
At least wolves didn't grin.

* * *

  
The morning transformation brought with it the usual agony of bones breaking and reforming.  
  
It also brought the familiar sensation of fear and guilt.  
  
 _Did I hurt anyone?_  
  
Wolfsbane Potion or not, locked room or not, lifelong friend in animal form or not, that was always the worst fear and the first question.  
  
Thankfully, the answer had been "no" every single time.  
  
 _How bad are my injuries? Do they need professional treatment? Can I afford professional treatment? How visible are they? How suspicious do I look?_  
  
The next bevy of worries was almost as much as instinct as the first. The feeling of Hogwarts wrapping itself around him reminded him that medical care was not an issue even before he realized that he was sore and exhausted, but uninjured.  
  
 _What do I remember about last night?_  
  
He had taken the Wolfsbane Potion properly. He remembered everything.  
  
Above all, he remembered the rush of delight when he'd pounced on Sirius. He'd liked the way it had felt to pin his friend to the ground. He'd enjoyed, just for a second, being an animal with super-human powers, and used those super-human powers against his dearest friend.  
  
"What hurts?" Sirius demanded presently. He was squatting in front of Remus with concern etched across his features. "I don't see anything. Do you think you're bleeding inside?"  
  
"No." Remus had known all about internal bleeding since childhood. The severe headache and abdominal pain were missing. Besides, he hadn't done anything to himself. He hadn't bitten or scratched himself. He hadn't thrown himself into a wall or down a flight of stairs.  
  
He'd flipped Sirius onto his back, hard, and held him down.  
  
"Are you all right?" he asked Sirius hoarsely.  
  
"Am I all right? Moony, _my_ transformations don't hurt. Did you hit your head or something? I don't think you did."  
  
"I knocked you over pretty hard."  
  
Sirius scoffed. "Once. I know you don't remember, but you've done that hundreds of times. Thousands. You used to do that twenty-five times a night. I'm starting to think you should skip the Wolfsbane Potion so we can get a decent fight in."  
  
It was a horrible thing to say. Skipping the Wolsbane Potion meant that he was a danger to himself and everyone else.  
  
Only Sirius would say something so terrible so blithely while he helped Remus to the bed and propped him up against a mountain of pillows. "Juice first or potion first?" he asked, casually summoning two cups.  
  
"Juice."  
  
Sirius Black was a stubborn bastard who at some level had never grasped that werewolves were dangerous and that if Remus ever hurt someone, Remus would die.  
  
Sirius Black was also a far above average nurse. His hands were gentle and his knowledge of remedies was encyclopedic.  
  
Remus knew that if he breathed a word of what he was thinking, absolution would be forthcoming in the blink of an eye. Sirius would tell him that it was normal to enjoy roughhousing with a friend. He would point out that he and James had pushed and shoved and punched each other almost every day of their lives. He would claim that, as long as Remus had control of his mind, a flash of pleasure at the what the wolf's body could do was no different that Sirius' own enjoyment of wagging his tail when he became a dog.  
  
Remus wasn't going to breathe a word of what he was thinking, because everything Sirius would say would be wrong.  
  
"You don't look right," Sirius declared. "I'm going to have Harry run for Madam Pomfrey."  
  
"She's busy seeing off the students who are leaving for the holiday," said Remus. A number of students had been prescribed potions for one ailment or another and needed to be given a few doses in a traveling case to see them through the holidays. None of this was ever distributed until the last minute before the students boarded the Hogwarts Express. "She'll be up to see me in a few hours."  
  
"Harry and I will wait with you," Sirius decided.  
  
"You and Harry will go home and start celebrating," Remus corrected.  
  
They had a wordless argument. Remus won.  
  
"You'll come see us on Christmas morning? Early, before the little monsters around here demand your attention?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"All right, then." Sirius gave Remus' blanket one last tug and ordered Remus to go to sleep.  
  
Remus was most of the way there already, though he knew his dreams would be troubled.  
  
 _Little monsters._  
  
There was only one monster in the castle.  
  
 _ **To be continued.**_


	30. Harry and the Holiday

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were standing at the window watching the students who were leaving the school for the holiday file toward Hogsmeade when Sirius emerged from Lupin's private rooms. Harry was surprised to see how many students were leaving: almost all of the first and second years, many of the third years, and even a few of the older students. It had seemed like everyone had decided to stay, but as he watched he realized that that wasn't quite true.   
  
"No reason for the younger ones to stay, I guess," said Ron, his thoughts seeming to parallel Harry's. "Not sure why I'm staying. I should just take off with you and Sirius."   
  
"You'd be welcome," said Sirius, and Ron smiled at him over his shoulder. Harry got the impression that Sirius had always wanted to be able to say that, as much time as he'd spent avoiding his own home when he'd been in school.   
  
"I doubt that your family would want you to stay with someone they don't know," Hermione told Ron.   
  
"Dad talked to Sirius last summer when we picked Harry up before the World Cup," said Ron casually. "Besides, all purebloods are related anyway, so he practically is my family."   
  
"Really?" asked Harry.   
  
"Really," said Sirius, swallowing a mouthful of pumpkin juice. "If you're only going to let your sons and daughters marry other purebloods your choice is very limited. There are hardly any true purebloods left. Almost everyone is really a half-blood. My parents were… more closely related to each other than you'd strictly consider a good idea. Arthur Weasley is something like my second cousin once removed."   
  
"So if my dad was a pureblood, does that mean I'm related to you and to Ron?" asked Harry. His heart sped up. He liked the idea more than he cared to admit.  
  
"The Potters were more isolated than some of the other families, so it's not a particularly close relationship, but yes. If you wanted to go through one of those horrible genealogy books, I'm sure you'd find a common ancestor within five generations or so."   
  
"You didn't know that?" asked Ron. Harry shook his head. "Ah, well now that you know we're family I'd better go with you for Christmas so you can get used to the idea."   
  
"You can't," said Hermione, her first objection to Ron's plan having been overruled. "You promised Parvati you'd go to the Yule Ball with her."   
  
"Parvati doesn't really want to go with me," said Ron. "She only said yes because no one else asked."  
  
"All the more reason for you not to back out now," said Hermione.   
  
"You could come with us," said Ron slyly. "Whoever you're going with could take Parvati. He won't mind. Everyone says Parvati and Padma are the best-looking girls in fourth year. Unless of course you don't really have a date—"   
  
Hermione's face hardened. "I do have a date, and he has enough substance to care about more than what someone looks like. I'm looking forward to the Yule Ball. I just wish Harry would come because I think he'd enjoy the look on your face when you see—"   
  
"Sirius, do we have those French pastries for breakfast?" Harry interrupted loudly. "They're the best thing about having Beauxbatons here."  
  
Sirius pulled the lid off of the tray sitting on Lupin's desk. "Pain au chocolat? Yes."  
  
Harry bit into one happily, and was pleased when Ron and Hermione followed suit. It would be harder for them to bicker about Hermione's date if their mouths were full.   
  
"Is Professor Lupin all right?" Harry asked. That probably should have been his first question, but then Sirius wouldn't have been here calmly eating breakfast with them if Lupin had had a bad night.  
  
"He's fine." Sirius, too, seemed to be enjoying the food. "You know I don't like to compliment Severus Snape," he began. Harry and Ron grinned at each other. "But that potion is a miracle, and there's only a handful of people in Britain who can brew it."   
  
"Does one of the others want to come here and be Potions Master?" asked Ron hopefully. Harry laughed, and even Hermione smiled a little. They were all laughing happily by the time breakfast was over, and Harry wondered for the thousandth time whether he'd made the right decision when he'd chosen to stay with Sirius for Christmas.   
  
"You're both invited to come visit any time you want, for as long as you want," Sirius repeated to Ron and Hermione as they got ready to leave.  
  
Harry had never left Ron and Hermione behind at Hogwarts. His stomach turned uncomfortably as Sirius levitated his trunk so it would follow them to the cottage in Hogsmeade.  


* * *

  
As soon as he opened the front door to Sirius' house, Harry knew that he had made the right decision after all. He hadn't been here since Halloween, and everything had changed in that time.   
  
Where empty bottles of Ogden's Old Firewhisky had once lined the kitchen table, there was now a tray of biscuits and a pot of hot chocolate. The table itself was outlined with garlands that sparkled with every color Harry could imagine, and the front room was dominated by a tree that was decorated with all manner of ornaments that darted here and there amidst the branches. The windows, too, glittered with light and snow that was just a bit too pretty to be real.   
  
"Welcome home," said Sirius. "Now sit down and do your homework."  
  
Harry gaped. "You're joking, right?"   
  
"Of course I'm joking," said Sirius. "Let's get our brooms and look at the Hogsmeade Christmas decorations from the sky."

* * *

  
For the next week, Harry and Sirius slept late every morning and spent most afternoons amusing themselves in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade. On one memorable day they went to a Quidditch match at Bodmin Moor Millennium Stadium, the site of an infamous 1884 match that lasted six month when the Snitch escaped after eluding capture by the Seekers. The Snitch was caught in just under three hours this time, but Harry's old Quidditch captain Oliver Wood's team won. Wood spotted Harry in the crowd even though Harry hadn't told him he was coming, and Harry and Sirius were invited to the Puddlemere United locker room to celebrate with the team.   
  
"Do you want to play professionally?" Wood asked as the team got ready to leave. "I'm sure you could."   
  
"Viktor Krum said the same thing," Harry couldn't resist telling Wood, and he described the night that he, Krum, and Cedric had flown through the Hogwarts grounds.  
  
"Think about it," said Wood. "I'd love to have you on my team again. And when you play professional Quidditch, you don't need to worry about how many OWLs and NEWTs you get."   
  
"I think Harry will keep his options open and worry a little bit about how many OWLs and NEWTs he gets," said Sirius loudly enough that some of Wood's teammates took a step backwards. Harry was forcibly reminded that for many years his godfather had been the most feared man in all of wizarding Britain.   
  
"How many OWLs and NEWTs did you get?" Harry asked as they left the stadium.  
  
Sirius briefly looked puzzled. "I don't actually remember," he admitted. "All of the core subjects, anyway."   
  
"Is that what you want me to do?" Harry had never before had an adult in his life who especially cared what classes he took. That had been a bit of a problem when he'd needed to choose extra subjects at the end of his second year. He'd asked for advice from everyone and wound up so confused that he'd just taken the same classes as Ron. In the case of Divination, that had been a mistake.   
  
"I'd rather see you have qualifications you don't need than need qualifications you don't have," said Sirius after a moment.   
  
Harry was almost surprised that his godfather was talking so seriously about test scores and qualifications. But then, Lupin had always said that Sirius had been the brightest student in their year.   
  
"If you've had thoughts of being an Auror, you'll need all of the core subjects," Sirius added.   
  
Harry wondered how Sirius had known that he'd thought of being an Auror ever since he'd first seen Mad-Eye Moody. It wasn't that he fancied having a wooden leg or a magical eye, but other than Quidditch, tracking down bad wizards was the only thing at which he excelled. Or at the very least, he was lucky and got help from the right people.   
  
He didn't tell any of this to Sirius. Instead he asked "Why would an Auror need to know anything about potions?"   
  
"So he doesn't get himself poisoned," said Sirius nonchalantly. "Tonks can tell you about it over Christmas dinner if you want. Do you mind going to my cousin Andromeda's house?"   
  
Harry hadn't really thought about it. He hadn't expect that he and Sirius would go anywhere. He had never had Christmas at anyone's house other than the Dursleys', and the Dursleys hadn't wanted him there at all.  
  
"We don't have to go if you don't want to," said Sirius when Harry didn't answer.   
  
"Will they mind if you bring me?" he asked hesitantly. It was Sirius' first real Christmas in thirteen years. If he wanted to spend it with his cousin's family, Harry didn't want to stop him  
  
Sirius laughed. "Of course not. They'd be horrified if I left you behind." He dropped his arm around Harry's shoulders. "You've met Tonks, haven't you? Baby Auror with pink hair?"   
  
"Yeah," said Harry.   
  
"Did she strike you as the kind of person who would do anything but open her home to her… godcousin, let's call you?"   
  
"No," said Harry.  
  
"Her dad's just the same. You'll like Ted. Now Anna comes off a little cooler, but that's just how she was raised. She'll want to show off her cooking for you and me and whatever strays Ted and Tonks manage to collect." He smiled. "I wonder if Tonks will get Mad-Eye to come."   
  
The prospect of eating Christmas dinner with Mad-Eye Moody drove all the nervousness out of Harry at once. "We should go," he decided.   
  
"I'll let them know," said Sirius. "Quidditch Museum in London tomorrow?"

* * *

  
Harry had read about the Museum of Quidditch in Quidditch Through the Ages, but it had never occurred to him that he, personally, would ever get to see it.  
Its exhibits included a medieval broomstick predating the development of the Cushioning Charm; the diary of Gertie Keddle, who lived on the edge of Queerditch Marsh in the eleventh century; a twelfth-century tapestry depicting a group setting out to catch a Snidget; and a letter from Modesty Rabnott to her sister Prudence, describing the incident that led to the inclusion of the Snidget in the game.  
  
The museum also had a room filled with Snitches that visitors were permitted to enter one at a time for ninety seconds. The goal was to catch as many Snitches as possible. Harry managed fourteen, which was good for the second-best score all year and a t-shirt with the museum's name written across the front in moving script.  
  
"I think you'll be a professional sometime soon," said the museum clerk admiringly.   
  
"You still have to take your OWLs," Sirius whispered in Harry's ear.

* * *

  
As much as he loved Quidditch, Harry's favorite day that week might have been the day that he and Sirius lured everyone in the Three Broomsticks into a bewitched snowball fight. Harry found himself rather at a disadvantage because he wasn't allowed to bewitch his own snowballs when he wasn't at school. He was surprised when Sirius asked him why.  
  
"Because that's the law," said Harry, feeling uncomfortably like he had been temporarily possessed by Hermione.   
  
"So?" asked Sirius.   
  
"So, I thought I was going be arrested just because a house-elf smashed a pudding in my Uncle's house two years ago. And then last year when I blew up Aunt Marge…" Harry tried to push the horrible memory out of his mind.   
  
"They only think they know you're doing magic because there aren't any other witches and wizards in that area," said Sirius. "There's so much magic around you when you're in Hogsmeade with me that you'd never be caught. Besides, the Ministry would expect your godfather to discipline you. They wouldn't bother about it. Most magical children do some magic when they're not at school."   
  
"The Weasleys don't!" Harry objected. He hadn't spent any time with other magical families, but he knew that Ron and Ginny and their brothers weren't allowed to use magic until they turned seventeen.  
  
"Well, with a father working for the Ministry and seven children including Fred and George, I suppose they would choose to enforce the rule. I shouldn't have said 'most.' But it's not uncommon."   
  
"You did magic growing up?"   
  
"It was rite of passage in my family to steal a wand and practice as soon as you learned to walk and lisp out a spell. Our house was unplottable anyway."   
  
"And my dad?"  
  
"James was the only child of two people who spent decades wishing for a baby and believing they'd never have one. They didn't deny him anything, least of all magic. They let me run around with a wand, too, after I moved in with them."  
  
"What about Professor Lupin?" From what Harry knew, Lupin had always been the one who wanted to follow the rules when his friends wanted to break them. And Lyall Lupin certainly hadn't struck Harry as the sort of man who would casually ignore the law about underage magic.   
  
"Well, Remus was a special case. If he'd never been bitten, I assume Lyall would have enforced the rule. But Remus' parents didn't believe he'd be allowed to attend Hogwarts, and they were desperate for him to be able to protect himself. He knew a lot of magic before he started school."   
  
Harry stood still, digesting all of this, as snow fell around them.   
  
"You don't have to if you don't want to, of course," Sirius concluded. "And I'm not suggesting that you do it in front of the Minister of Magic, or that you break Arthur and Molly's rules when you're visiting them. But if there's something that you want to do while you're with me, I don't want you to deprive yourself. You've shouldered too much of an adult burden these past few years to be treated like a child."  
  
It was strange how being told that he shouldn't be treated like a child made Harry feel more like a child than he had in a long time.

* * *

  
On Christmas Eve, they stayed up all night in front of the fire listening to Christmas carols, eating biscuits, and playing games. Dawn hadn't yet broken when there was a knock at the door. Sirius and Harry grinned at each other, knowing that it must be Lupin.   
  
"Come in, Remus," Sirius shouted.   
  
"You should be more careful about checking who's at your door," Lupin's voice called.   
  
"And you should stop hanging around with Mad-Eye Moody. His paranoia's rubbing off on you."  
  
"You wouldn't be so disrespectful of Mad-Eye's healthy caution if it turned out that I'd brought a small army with me and we were ready to bury you both in an avalanche of snow."  
  
Harry turned around and was just able to catch a glimpse of red hair before the whole of the room went white.   
  
"Instant Avalanche!" yelled Fred Weasley. "Available from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes next spring, along with Instant Swamp."   
  
"We hope," added George Weasley. "The swamp is more complicated."   
  
"Happy Christmas, by the way," added Ron.   
  
Sirius and Harry, buried in mounds of snow, burst out laughing.   
  
"Do you happen to know how to melt this Instant Avalanche?" Sirius called once he'd caught his breath.   
  
There was a flash of light, and the snow vanished as quickly as it had come. It hadn't precisely melted; neither Harry's clothes nor the room were wet. He scrambled to his feet as Hermione bustled over to hug him and wish him a happy Christmas.   
  
Ron, the twins, and Ginny were throwing off their cloaks and dumping them unceremoniously on the floor while Lupin let a pile of presents drift over in the general direction of the tree.   
  
The eight of them fell immediately to opening gifts, but Harry didn't much care what he unwrapped. He was just happy that he hadn't missed Christmas morning with Hermione and the Weasleys. His Weasley jumper this year was green, and he pulled it on over his pajamas.  
  
"She really does try harder when you're not family," said Fred, as he did almost every year when he saw Harry wearing his newest jumper.   
  
"Or when you're _distant_ family," said Ron with a wink.  
  
The twins were eager to borrow Harry's new golden cauldron (Harry had secretly always wanted one, although he knew that he had no real use for it) in the hopes of capturing Professor Snape's reaction on film for posterity. Ron reminded the twins that they didn't take Potions because they'd performed dreadfully on their OWLs. George told Harry to think about using the cauldron properly and that he'd know when the right moment arose.   
  
It all ended too soon when Lupin announced that he was required to be at the school to supervise breakfast. Hermione and the Weasleys returned with him, and Harry was so pleasantly sleepy that he hardly felt bereft at not joining them. He dozed off looking at one of his new Quidditich books and didn't awaken until it was time to go to the Tonks' house for Christmas dinner.

* * *

  
The Tonks' house turned out to be a tidy, pleasant sort of place with a muddy pond in the garden. Harry looked around with interest. The home was clearly magical; the photographs on the walls waved hello at them when they entered and the pots on the kitchen stoves were stirring themselves. And yet, everything was so neat and uncluttered that Aunt Petunia would have been hard-pressed to find something to criticize. It was quite different from the Burrow, and Harry thought that he didn't like it nearly as much. But then, it might have been that he didn't like it so much because it reminded him of Privet Drive.   
  
They had nearly been late for dinner, but Ted Tonks— a fair-haired, big-bellied man— assured them that it was no trouble because Mad-Eye Moody had insisted on checking every corner of the house for traps.  
  
"That's why Mad-Eye doesn't get invited places," said Tonks cheerfully as she bounded into the room, her hair half-red and half-green. "Hi, Sirius. Hi, Harry. Remember me?"   
  
"The Auror in training from last spring," said Harry. It was dizzying to think how much his life had changed since the day he had seen her standing guard over Peter Pettigrew. He was spending Christmas with his godfather, just as he would have hoped.   
  
"I'm fully qualified now," she said with a bright grin.   
  
"Congratulations."   
  
"Thanks. You aren't going to the Yule Ball?" she asked, rather nosily, Harry thought. They all made their way to a beautifully decorated table. As they sat, a cooked turkey began to carve itself.  
  
"He's only fourteen," Sirius told Tonks. "Plenty of time for balls. Only one first Christmas with his godfather."   
  
"I suppose," said Tonks. "I asked the students about it when I was helping out at Hogwarts and they all seemed excited."   
  
"Was it your job to ask about adolescent romances, or was it your job to give them a hope of defending themselves the next time a crazed megalomaniac starts casting the Imperius Curse on half the population?" asked Mad-Eye.   
  
"Excellent Christmas dinner conversation, Mad-Eye," said Sirius.   
  
"You really pestered the students about the Yule Ball during class, Nymphadora?" asked Andromeda. Andromeda almost frightened Harry. He thought that he would not want to make a mistake of any kind while he was in her home.   
  
"Why shouldn't I?" asked Tonks. "It was the sixth years. I was at school with them. I taught Cedric Diggory how to open the door to the Hufflepuff common room myself."   
  
The turkey was now serving itself, and the other dishes were following suit, distributing themselves onto each plate as they marched around the table.   
  
"You needn't eat anything you don't like," Ted Tonks whispered aside to Harry. "It's just a family tradition to charm the dishes to do the serving on special occasions. Dora used to applaud every year when she was younger."   
  
"It is pretty great," Harry agreed, and he meant it. It was more whimsical than anything he had expected to find here. Aunt Petunia would have approved of the clean kitchen and the neat tablecloth, but she would have _hated_ this.  
  
"You shouldn't have asked the students about the Yule Ball because you were in a position of authority and you never know what feelings have been stirred up by something like a Yule Ball," Andromeda was saying to her daughter. "It wasn't appropriate."   
  
"Do _you_ think it was appropriate, Sirius?" Tonks asked, clearly choosing him as her most likely ally.   
  
"I'm sure professors at Hogwarts did at least ten more inappropriate things that day alone. Severus Snape probably said ten inappropriate things to students before his first class that day."   
  
The debate was more pleasant than contentious. They were all eating now, and the food was excellent.   
  
"I'd like to see Nymphadora set her standards higher than Severus Snape," said Andromeda. "What did Professor Lupin say when you did it?"   
  
"I think he was a bit annoyed," admitted Tonks. "He said he hated balls when he was at school."   
  
"As most sane students do," said Mad-Eye Moody, taking a drink from a flask.  
  
"I swear on my favorite shade of pink hair that my parents haven't poisoned the wine," said Tonks.   
  
"I don't think your parents poisoned the wine," said Mad-Eye. "I think there are a lot of criminals out there who are clever enough to wait for just the right moment."  
  
Sirius toasted Mad-Eye with his own glass of wine. "You're sitting at the table with a convicted mass murderer, after all," he pointed out.   
  
"I'm sitting at the table with proof that our justice system is imperfect, despite our honest efforts," returned Mad-Eye, and Harry sensed that there was real grief beneath the grizzled Auror's gruff tone.   
  
Sirius seemed to think so, too, and he didn't appear to like it very much because he returned to the previous subject. "What possessed you to ask the students about the Yule Ball, anyway?" he asked Tonks.  
  
"It was my friend Penny's idea," said Tonks.   
  
"Penny Haywood is a brilliant girl," said Andromeda. "And it goes without saying that Nymphadora is brilliant. I don't know why they come up with such terrible ideas when they put their heads together."   
  
"Now, your friend Tulip we would have expected this from," said Ted with a wink.  
  
"Tulip thought Professor Lupin might have murdered his school girlfriend."  
  
Sirius choked, then cleared his throat. "I promise you that Professor Lupin did not have a school girlfriend to murder, and he didn't murder anyone else, either."   
  
"Technically, you don't know what he was doing while you were in Azkaban," said Mad-Eye.   
  
"I know _Remus_ ," said Sirius firmly.  
  
"Then you can tell me why he hated balls," said Tonks. "Should I just avoid him tonight?"   
  
"They have Aurors chaperoning the Yule Ball?" Sirius asked.   
  
"Dumbledore really doesn't like having Karkaroff at the school," answered Mad-Eye. "All that chaos, all those students acting irrationally in one place. It would be the perfect cover if he wanted to do real damage."   
  
"I don't always agree with Dumbledore, but he's quite right about that," said Sirius. "And Tonks, you shouldn't avoid Remus tonight. Make sure he dances with you."   
  
"I'll step on his feet."  
  
"He won't mind. Promise me you'll ask him to dance with you."   
  
Tonks eyed Sirius suspiciously. "Is this some kind of bet? Or a prank?"   
  
"No," said Sirius. "I just think that as long as you both have to go to the ball, you should both dance."   
  
"Why did _you_ hate balls when you were at school?" asked Tonks.   
  
Sirius made a face. "They reminded me of home. Dress robes and politics, and there was always at least one pureblood girl who thought she could bring me back into the fold with all the other bigots."   
  
"I didn't hate them, exactly, but it was certainly frustrating not to be able to be with your father all night," said Andromeda quietly. "We were only able to dance at all because of elaborate schemes. Bets that I'd 'lost." Polyjuice potion. Masks. I was envious of my friends who never had to hide."  
  
"We enjoyed it more because we had to work for it, I think," said Ted just as quietly. "We knew that it was special and we had to appreciate every moment. We relished the anticipation. You know we did."   
  
"Perhaps," conceded Andromeda."And every time one of our friends helped us, it made us better friends."  
  
"I always liked the story about Mum's friend Kimberly betting Mum in front of the whole class that if she got better marks in Herbology, Mum would have to dance with Dad, and Dad asking why he was being punished," said Tonks. Everyone laughed.  
  
"And I will always be grateful to Horace Slughorn for 'assigning' us to partner in NEWT potions and 'refusing to change his mind' when I confronted him about it in front of half of the Great Hall," Andromeda reminisced.   
  
"Potions sounds like it was so much more fun before Snape got there," Tonks sighed wistfully. "I think he was angry when I made it into the NEWT classes. He asked whether I was sure I hadn't cheated off of Penny."   
  
"So an Auror really does need a NEWT in Potions?" Harry asked Tonks. He couldn't help but feel disappointed. He knew Sirius wouldn't have consciously lied to him, but he had held out hope that things had changed since Sirius had been in school and Sirius just hadn't known.   
  
"I'm afraid so," said Tonks. "Though you might find the advanced classes a bit easier than the basic ones. I did. The real trick is getting into the NEWT level courses in the first place. Snape won't take you if you don't get an Outstanding on your OWL."   
  
"And he'd never let me get an Outstanding," Harry realized.   
  
"He doesn't give the test or grade it. He can't stop you passing," rumbled Mad-Eye Moody.   
  
Harry hadn't known that. Sometimes he still knew so little about what was going on around him at Hogwarts. Everyone seemed to forget that while he wasn't a Muggle-born, he had entered Hogwarts no more familiar with the wizarding world than any of them.   
  
"Though if they were going to change the qualifications for anyone, I suppose it would be you," Tonks mused. "You could fill out your application in green crayon. All you'd have to do was write 'I'm Harry Potter and I defeated You-Know-Who.'"   
  
"I don't remember that and I don't think I even did anything!" Harry objected. The room fell silent. The others stared at him, some with their forks frozen in midair. It was the story everyone in the wizarding world wanted to hear and the story Harry generally avoided telling, not least because there was nothing to tell. He felt blood rush to his face under the pressure of five sets of eyes. "I mean," he corrected, "I reckon I wouldn't want a position I hadn't earned. If I can't get into the advanced Potions classes, I should go play Quidditch or something."   
  
The room stayed silent. Harry wondered if Christmas at Privet Drive would have been better than this. At least he wouldn't have been stupid enough to talk about his schoolwork there.  
  
"Well said, Potter," said Moody at last. "You have the temperament to be an Auror. I knew that when I saw you last spring after you brought Pettigrew in."  
  
Harry was about to clarify that he hadn't brought Pettigrew in, exactly, when he felt Sirius' hand on his back, warm and steady. "And that's the last I want to hear about Peter Pettigrew today," said Sirius. "Why doesn't Ted tell us the story about the first time he saw a magically decorated Christmas tree? I always liked that one, and Harry's never heard it."  
  
Andromeda's eyes softened. "I think I was in love with you from that moment on, Ted," she said.   
  
"You were not," Ted chuckled, but he took his wife's hand and launched into the story anyway.  
  
Harry tried to listen to the story—the crux of it was that eleven-year-old Ted hadn't realized that the tree had been decorated with real fairies who might fly away with the whole thing if their vanity was insulted—but his mind was too full to truly enjoy it.   
  
OWLs and NEWTs, Quidditch and cauldrons, Muggles and wizards, Yule Balls and holidays, the Dursleys and the Blacks.  
  
He remembered his last Christmas with the Dursleys before he'd gotten his Hogwarts letter. He and Dudley had both been ten years old.  
  
_ Harry had lived through enough Christmases by then not to expect any presents beyond perhaps a pair of socks or a toy Dudley had broken the year before. But, to his amazement, the table that morning had been laden with a dozen brightly wrapped packages bearing Dudley's name and just as many bearing Harry's.   
Dudley jumped into the midst of his pile as usual, his piggy eyes bright with avarice as he shredded the paper faster than Harry would have thought possible. Harry, for his part, just wanted to look. He'd never had the chance to look at a pile of presents with his name on them before.   
_   
_ "Go on, boy," said Uncle Vernon, briefly diverting his eyes from Dudley, who was crowing over a fat box of computer games. "Open your presents. Happy Christmas."   
_   
_ Harry tried to savor the moment. He didn't know what had happened to make his uncle want him to have a happy Christmas. He had given up trying to please his aunt and uncle as a hopeless task at least two years ago.   
_   
_ But if things had changed… well, the teachers at school had been talking a good deal about Christmas miracles recently…   
_   
_ He reached for the first box and unwrapped it carefully. Dudley had put down his things to stare at Harry. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, too, were giving him all of their attention.   
_   
_ Harry knew that nothing good ever came of that.   
_   
_ The box was light, he noticed.   
_   
_ The box was going to be empty.   
_   
_ All of the boxes were going to be empty.   
_   
_ It was Uncle Vernon's idea of a joke. (Aunt Petunia wasn't going to put this much effort into something that might make a mess, and Dudley didn't have the patience to wrap a dozen boxes and stack them on the table without ripping into his own presents.)   
_   
_ Harry opened the box and tried to sound as delighted as he could. "Thank you!" he exclaimed. "Thank you so much, Uncle Vernon!" He didn't bother to open the others carefully; instead, he ripped through them as Dudley had done, faster than Dudley had done. "Thank you!" he yelled each time he demolished another box.  _   
  
_ "I was hoping for one of these! It's my favorite color! It's just like Dudley's, only bigger!"   
_   
_ "It's not bigger than mine!" Dudley shouted after a moment of confused silence. "Those boxes are empty, you freak!"   
_   
_ "They're not empty," said Harry seriously. "It's just that the presents are invisible."   
_   
_ "If they're invisible, how do you know what color they are? You can't see them!"   
_   
_ "I guess I have special powers," said Harry.   
_   
_ And that was the last thing he said, because before he could even shake the last curl of ribbon from his wrist, Uncle Vernon had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and thrown him into his cupboard.   
_   
_ "YOU—DO—NOT—HAVE—SPECIAL—POWERS!" he bellowed. "NO—ONE—HAS—SPECIAL—POWERS!"   
_   
_ Harry remained locked in the cupboard for the rest of the day. He was not allowed to have any meals.   
_   
_ As if he wanted them.   
_   
_ As if he cared when Dudley sat right outside the locked cupboard door with an enormous plate of Christmas pudding and made smacking sounds in Harry's ear as he ate it. _   
  
He was relieved when, soon after dessert, Sirius told Andromeda that they needed to leave.   
  
"Is Harry quite all right?" asked Andromeda quietly enough that Harry assumed he hadn't been meant to hear. Sirius murmured something so softly that Harry couldn't make it out, and before he knew it they were wrapped in their winter coats and on their way.  
  
_** To be continued. ** _


	31. Harry and the Holiday 2

"Let's walk for a while before I Apparate you," suggested Sirius when they'd said goodbye to the others. "I know you haven't gotten sick from side-along Apparition yet, but it would be a shame if the first time you did you lost your Christmas dinner."

Harry nodded. The cold December air felt good on his face. He thought he wouldn't have minded walking all the way back to Hogsmeade.

"Though if you need to be sick, just be sick," Sirius added philosophically. "No use delaying the inevitable."

Harry almost laughed. "I feel better already," he said.

"Good. You look better, too. You were rather green just before we left."

_Green_. Green like his new Weasley sweater. Green like his dress robes. Green like the crayon Tonks had said he should use to fill out his Auror application. Green like Slytherin, whose Head of House wouldn't want him to take NEWT-level Potions. Green like his mother's eyes and the perfect lawns of Privet Drive. Green like the flashes of light that had killed his parents and sent him to Privet Drive in the first place.

"Was your cousin offended?" Harry asked when they'd walked in silence for what felt like a very long time.

"Anna? No. Why would you ask that?"

Harry shrugged. "Her house reminds me of the Dursleys' and Aunt Petunia would have been offended."

"I assure you that my cousin Andromeda has nothing in common with your aunt beyond a habit of keeping her kitchen clean."

As soon as he'd made the comparison aloud, Harry had known it was off. Aunt Petunia could never have married a man like Ted—friendly and funny and happy to tell stories about times he'd made mistakes. Aunt Petunia could never have raised a child like Tonks—curious and compassionate and hardworking. Andromeda might have sounded a bit haughty when she'd criticized her daughter for talking to students about the Yule Ball, but she'd been concerned about the students' feelings, not about projecting an appearance of propriety.

"I can't stop thinking about the Dursleys. I don't know why," admitted Harry when Sirius let the silence stretch between them once more.

Sirius gave that some thought. "I have an idea," he said at last. Harry looked at him questioningly. "I didn't like the house I grew up in or the family I grew up with, either."

"I know." Sirius was the only person Harry had ever met who seemed to have any real idea what it was like to live with the Dursleys.

"I've gone back to that house a few times since I left Azkaban. It gets easier every time because I get to leave. I know that 12 Grimmauld Place is in one place and I'm in another."

That made a certain kind of sense to Harry, but he didn't like where this was going. "I'm not going to visit the Dursleys," he said. It was bad enough that he would be returning to Privet Drive in June. Unlike Sirius, he couldn't leave whenever he wanted.

"Of course not. But we can walk by the house and be glad that you aren't there. There will be people visiting their families all around the neighborhood, so we won't stand out. As long as you keep your hat pulled down low I doubt your relatives will notice you even if they see you."

  
Sirius looked so hopeful that Harry didn't want to tell him no. He wanted Sirius to have a normal Christmas just as much as he'd wanted a normal Christmas for himself, and he couldn't be a part of that if he was busy dwelling on something that had happened four years ago. "All right," he agreed, and he grabbed Sirius' extended arm.

The side-along Apparition was the worst Harry had ever experienced. He didn't know whether it was because he was dreading the outcome or because Sirius wasn't terribly familiar with the destination or because they'd both eaten too much at dinner, but Harry almost fell to his knees when they landed. His ears burned unpleasantly.

"I'm sorry," said Sirius. His hands ran roughly down Harry's sides as if he were discerning that Harry was physically intact. "Do you need to sit down?"

"No," said Harry. They were going to get this over with. He glanced over his shoulder and realized that they were near St. Grogory's Primary School, where Harry had once turned his teacher's wig blue and spent many hours avoiding Dudley's fists.

He pulled his hat down as low as he could without upsetting his glasses and strode determinedly toward Privet Drive.  


* * *

  
Sirius had been wrong.

Sirius had been wrong about this making Harry feel better, and he had been wrong about the Dursleys not noticing anything amiss.

All three Dursleys (plus Aunt Marge and Dudley's friend Piers Polkiss) were in front of the house. They were loudly admiring Uncle Vernon's newest company car. Harry knew that he ought to rush past as quickly as he could, but he couldn't help but stop and stare at the menagerie.  
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marge looked as much like a pair of purple walruses as always. Aunt Petunia was still bony and horse-faced. Piers still looked like a rat.

Dudley no longer looked like a pig in a wig.

The horrible diet of last summer had worked. Dudley's fat had been replaced with muscle. He had grown taller, and while he was still broad, he broadness now gave the impression of strength instead of sloth. Bored with admiring the car, Dudley shadow-boxed around Piers' head.

Harry had no doubt that Dudley would have less trouble catching his prey now than he had had when he was eleven.

Harry had no doubt that Dudley's fists would hurt more now than than they had on the playground outside St. Grogory's Primary School.

It was Piers who scented Harry, like he had done so often in the past.

"Isn't that your cousin?" he asked, narrowly avoiding Dudley's large fist as he pointed.

Sirius had been wrong, but Sirius was quick. He put himself between Harry and the Dursleys, obstructing their view, and loudly complimented the car. Harry and Sirius rounded the corner just as Vernon's booming voice echoed that it couldn't have been Harry, the man's taste in cars was too good to have been one of Harry's kind.

"I'm sorry, Harry," said Sirius for what felt like the tenth time that day (although Harry was reasonably certain it was only the second). "That didn't go the way I intended."

"No," said Harry. They made it back to the playground in record time. Harry looked at the roof of the school kitchens where he'd once taken refuge from Dudley and his gang. The building looked smaller now. It no longer seemed so ridiculous that he could climb the chimney if he really wanted to. "I guess it's good to have a warning."

"A warning about what?"

"Dudley could really hurt me now if he wanted to. I could always outrun him before, and I probably still can, but now that he's in shape…" Harry trailed off. "I never thought that diet would work."

"Do you really think your cousin would hurt you?"

"What do you care?" asked Harry before he caught himself. He knew that Sirius cared, and besides, it was Christmas. "Sorry," he said, because Sirius shouldn't be the only one constantly apologizing. "We never should have tried to have a normal Christmas. I've never been normal."

"I think this Christmas was pretty normal," said Sirius. "We exchanged ridiculous presents with the people we care about. We went to dinner and talked over each other about inappropriate things. We listened to stories most of us have heard before while we tried not to dwell on the relatives we hate."

"That's normal?" asked Harry weakly.

"So I've been led to believe. But Harry, your cousin—"

"Punching me has been his favorite hobby for as long as I can remember," said Harry, trying not to sound bitter. "He couldn't catch me very often, and then he was afraid of me after we found out about magic. Of course, now he knows I can't use it outside of school without getting in trouble. I can avoid him mostly, I always do…" He sighed and looked up at Sirius. Sirius was tall, and Harry was still so short. He wondered whether he would ever grow the way Dudley had. "Why did you change your mind?" he asked at last.

"Change my mind?"

"In Dumbledore's office last spring you asked me to come live with you. You said that once your name was cleared, if I wanted a different home—"  
A wave of raw pain washed over Sirius' face, and Harry remembered why he hadn't brought this up in the months that had passed since Sirius had decided not to take him away from the Dursleys after all.

"Never mind," said Harry. "Let's go back to Hogsmeade." He held out his arm.

"Right this second I'd splinch us both," said Sirius roughly. He looked around, reassuring himself that they were alone. "I didn't change my mind. I just learned that your aunt's house has to remain your home."

"It's not my home," Harry snapped. "It wasn't ever my home. I haven't thought of it as my home since about two weeks after I got to Hogwarts. Hogwarts is the only home I have. Privet Drive is a place I have to go every summer until someone takes pity on me and gets me out of there. That's all."

"Privet Drive is a place you have to go every summer because your aunt is your mother's closest surviving relative. When your mother died saving you, her sacrifice left a protection in your blood. As long as you can call your aunt's home your home— even if you hate it— Voldemort can't touch you there. I didn't know that when I said that I would— that we would— Harry, I don't like this any more than you do."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" asked Harry.

"I was afraid I would accidentally break the charm. I was afraid that you would stop thinking of Privet Drive as your home, but if that train left the station years ago—"

"It did," said Harry.

"Harry, the only thing in this world that could ever stop me from formally asserting guardianship over you and inviting your relatives to go fuck themselves is your safety."

"But Voldemort's gone."

"You know he isn't. He came for you in your first year at Hogwarts and you nearly died from that diary in your second year. Until we're absolutely certain that every piece of him is gone, we cannot afford to give up the protection Lily left you."

"My dad died saving me, too, and my dad was related to all kinds of people. Including the Weasleys. Including you. Why doesn't his sacrifice matter?"

"I don't know. The only one who might know is Dumbledore, and Dumbledore shares what he wants to share when he wants to share it."

"So can't we find Voldemort and lock him up?" asked Harry.

"I'm working on it," said Sirius. "I promise you that."

"I want to help."

"If it gets to the point that there's something you can do, you'll be the first to know."

It was too much and not enough at the same time. He needed to think of something, anything, that wasn't his mother's screams or the brokenness in Sirius' voice. "I think I'll go to the Yule Ball after all," he declared coolly. "Can you Apparate, or should I call the Knight Bus?"

A rigid, neutral look pushed the lines of grief off of Sirius' face. "I'll Apparate. Give me your arm."

Harry changed into his dress robes as soon as they returned to Hogsmeade.

He wished the robes weren't quite so green. "Avada Kedavra," he whispered as he looked in the mirror. A flash of green light, and his mother was gone, and he was magically bonded to his Aunt Petunia. He wondered if she knew. She must, he decided.

Worrying about Cho Chang and her friend Marietta seemed very far away. Tonight, he just wanted to be in the same room as Ron and Hermione, and if Parvati Patil and Hermione's secret date were part of the bargain, so be it.  


* * *

  
He arrived in the crowded Gryffindor Common Room soon before the ball was set to begin. Sirius had insisted on escorting him all the way to the castle and then had vanished to find Professor Lupin.

"Harry! You came!" Suddenly Ron was at his side, and Harry had never been so happy to see anyone in all his life. "Didn't want to do this without you, mate." Harry nodded stiffly. "You'll have to walk in without a date, but I think that makes you the lucky one." Ron tugged at the fraying edge of his second-hand dress robes. "Parvati might turn around and skip the ball entirely when she sees me looking like this."

Nearby, Ginny rolled her eyes. That, at least, felt normal. "Ginny," asked Harry, "Do you know any third-years who want to go to the ball but can't because they haven't been invited by someone in the upper years?"

Before Ginny could answer, a bright-eyed, curly-haired girl appeared out of nowhere and jumped in front of Harry. "I do! I do! Take me, I'll make sure you have the best time."

Harry had no idea who the girl was.

"This is my roommate, Christianne Steele," said Ginny dryly.

"I'll go change," said Christianne. She couldn't have flown up the stairs to the girls' dormitory more quickly if she'd had a broom.

"Interesting way of getting a date," said Ron.

"I didn't mean it like that," said Harry. "We don't have to talk to each other. It's just that if she wanted to go and she couldn't without being invited—"

"That was a nice thing to do," said Neville softly. He had appeared at Ginny's side, and Harry remembered, as if from another lifetime, that Neville had been the first to find out that Hermione already had a date when he'd asked her. Ginny had agreed to go with Neville because, like Chistianne, she was too young to attend without an invitation.

Parvati arrived, looking very pretty in robes of shocking pink, her long dark plait braided with gold. She was accompanied by her friend Lavender, and the two of them sought out Ron and Seamus. "Where's Hermione?" Harry asked. They told him that they had no idea and rushed Ron and Seamus out the door.

"We can wait for Christy," Neville told Harry, and Ginny nodded. Apparently Neville at least knew who she was if he called her Christy.

Harry had wanted to be with Ron and Hermione, to fade into the background, to be anyone other than the boy whose mother had bought his protection with her own life. It wasn't to be. Ron and Hermione had their own priorities tonight.

Ginny and Neville, at least, were familiar enough with him that they didn't stare.

That was not the case with Christy, who came charging down the stairs as fast as she'd charged up them. "That was fast," Harry told her. He'd been given to understand that most of the girls had spent all day getting ready.

"I didn't want to keep you waiting," she said breathlessly, her eyes fixed on his scar. Harry wished he'd left on the hat he had pulled over his face when they'd gone to see the Dursleys. It wouldn't have looked any worse that Ron's dress robes. (He'd have to find a way to get Ron to accept a gift of new dress robes. He'd ask Sirius about it once he was ready to look at Sirius again. That might never happen.)

The four of them made their way to the entrance hall, which was packed with students milling around waiting for the Great Hall's doors to be thrown open. The students from the other schools arrived, and Harry distantly heard Professor McGonagall calling for the champions. He caught a quick glimpse of Cedric and Cho, and Fleur Delacour and Roger Davies. "Where's Krum?" he wondered.

"There," pointed Christy, who was probably the sort of girl who spent afternoons staking out Durmstrang's boat and hoping for a glimpse of Krum.

With Krum was Hermione. But she didn't look like Hermione at all. She had done something with her hair; it was no longer bushy but sleek and shiny, and twisted up into an elegant knot at the back of her head. She was wearing robes of periwinkle blue, and she was holding herself differently somehow.

"Viktor Krum is Hermione's date?" Harry asked Ginny disbelievingly. For an instant, he almost forgot everything else that had happened that day.

Ginny nodded in a self-satisfied way. "Doesn't she look nice?"

"All the girls look nice," said Harry distractedly. "You too, Christy and Ginny."

Ginny almost blushed. Christy clutched Harry's arm more tightly as they found their way to a small, round table (the usual house tables had vanished) where they were joined by Ron and Parvati, Lavender and Seamus, and four Ravenclaws, one of whom was Parvati's sister Padma.

Ron spent most of the meal glaring at Hermione and Krum and occasionally spluttering incoherently. Ginny watched Ron's discomfort with an almost vicious delight. Neville knocked over his glass of water twice. Parvati eyed Ron with disgust; Christy clung to Harry like he was some sort of show dog; Lavender simpered constantly; the Ravenclaws discussed a riddle-based game that sounded incredibly boring.

It was awful.

It was better than staying in Hogsmeade under Sirius' distressed, watchful gaze as he tried to wrap his mind around the real reason he had been sent to live at Privet Drive.

He'd known for years that his parents had died to save him. He'd even heard their voices— his mother screaming and begging, his father trying to hold Voldemort off just long enough.

But he'd never felt his mother's blood whispering in his veins, tying him to Aunt Petunia and her home whether either one of them liked it or not.

He wished that he'd been told the whole truth in the first place. He never would have bothered hoping for a life with Sirius, then. He never would have wasted his energy doubting Sirius or Lupin. He would have accepted the truth along with the truth that his parents hadn't died in a car accident and it wouldn't have seemed so haunting now.

He tried to picture any of the girls at the table throwing themselves in front of a killing curse. He couldn't do it.

He tried to picture any of the boys being locked in a cupboard for refusing to cry when they hadn't been given any Christmas presents. He couldn't do that, either.

Sirius had said they'd been almost normal that day. Harry was sure Sirius was wrong.

 _ **To be continued.**_


	32. The Yule Ball

Remus had just wrestled himself into his dress robes— he didn't dislike dress robes, per se, but he had worn them so rarely in his life that he had never quite turned the wearing of them into an art form— when he heard Sirius outside his door. Harry must have decided to attend the Yule Ball after all.   
  
"Come in, Padfoot," he called.   
  
"You're just telling me to come in without asking whether I'm going to throw an Instant Avalanche at your head?" Sirius joked weakly. "I thought the Defense professor knew better than that."   
  
"What's wrong?" asked Remus, ignoring both the attempt at humor and the way the dress robes had somehow twisted themselves around his chest instead of lying flat.   
  
"I took Harry to his aunt and uncle's house and I ended up telling him why he can't leave. The blood protection stuff. He didn't take it very well."   
  
At the moment, the way Harry had taken it was the least of Remus' concerns. "Did you break the blood protection?" he demanded.   
  
"I don't think so. Look, I didn't say it until Harry told me that that isn't his home and that Hogwarts is the only home he has. That means that what he feels about his home, what he thinks about his home, doesn't affect the magic."   
  
Remus frantically tugged at his memories of removing Harry from the Dursleys' house just before his seventeenth birthday. All he remembered of the explanation was that Harry and the Dursleys had had the complete understanding that they would never live together again. He didn't think he'd felt the charm break; he just remembered the sudden attack by the Death Eaters as soon as they'd flown away from the house, and Snape severing George's ear…   
  
He glanced down at his front, expecting to see it soaked with George's blood. Instead, he saw Sirius' hands straightening the delicate robes.   
  
"I think you're right," he told Sirius. "But I still don't like it.  
  
"You don't have to like it. There. Now you look nice for Nymphadora."   
  
Remus didn't dignify that with a response.   
  
"It wouldn't be a very good spell if Harry could have broken it by deciding to run away when he was five years old or something like that. I think there has to be a formal acknowledgement by the adults."  
  
That was true.   
  
He didn't like it.   
  
"I'm staying in your rooms until it's time to take Harry back at midnight, all right?"   
  
As if Sirius would have cared if Remus had told him "no."   
  
Sirius wasn't doing exactly what Remus told him to do any longer. That was both a cause for celebration and utterly terrifying.  


* * *

  
The decorations sparkled. The lighting was dim. The students clustered in unusual groups and wore unusual colors. All of this made it exceedingly difficult for Remus to spot Harry from across the Great Hall. Beside him at the high table, Félicité asked why he was so concerned.  
  
"I wanted to keep an eye on Harry Potter," he whispered, careful that none of Harry's classmates seated among the champions would hear him. Hermione probably knew exactly where Harry was, but Remus didn't want to confirm to her that he was any more concerned than usual. When and how much Harry told Hermione of what he had learned that afternoon was Harry's decision.   
  
Hermione was preening (he hadn't thought the girl capable of it, but students surprised their professors sometimes) on Viktor Krum's arm. Remus doubted that it was really Krum for whom she was showing off.   
  
He followed her gaze. _There_ was Harry, along with Ron and Neville and a handful of other students. He appeared to have come with Christianne Steele, a flighty third-year Gryffindor who was rather an odd choice, but harmless enough.   
  
"Are you truly concerned that something dangerous may happen tonight?" asked Félicité.   
  
"Nothing beyond the usual when teenagers' raging hormones are involved," he conceded. "But I'm paid to be paranoid."   
  
"Understood. I am as well. Though when it comes to raging hormones, you can be grateful that you don't have a part-Veela champion to protect."   
  
A few dozen of the students seated closest to the high table were indeed gazing rapturously at Fleur while ignoring their dates. Fleur's own partner, Roger Davies, appeared to be so stunned at his good fortune that he was unable even to order his meal until his third try.   
  
When the food had been eaten, Dumbledore stood up and asked the students to do the same. Then, with a wave of his wand, the tables zoomed back along the walls leaving the floor clear. Dumbledore conjured a raised platform into existence along the right wall. A set of drums, several guitars, a lute, a cello, and some bagpipes were set upon it.  
  
The Weird Sisters now trooped up onto the stage to wildly enthusiastic applause. They wore robes that had been artfully ripped and torn. Remus, who for much of his life had had no choice but to repeatedly mend irreparably torn robes, couldn't help but dislike the style on principle.  
  
The three champions and their partners arose and began to dance. After a moment, Dumbledore extended his hand to Madame Maxime; the top of his pointed hat barely tickled her chin. Remus, in turn, extended his hand to Félicité, who accepted it gracefully.  
It turned out that Félicité was an excellent dancer, but all Remus could do was wonder where Dora was. He knew that she was in the room somewhere, but perhaps she had morphed herself into an unrecognizable student? He was genuinely fond of Félicité and was grateful for the ease of having her as his counterpart. But he wanted pink hair instead of dark, clumsiness instead of grace.   
  
He liked his colleague, but he missed his wife.  
  
He caught sight of Harry, looking miserable as he let Christianne lead him in a slow circle. (Did Sirius need to give Harry a quick lesson in formal dancing? That certainly would have been a less dangerous use of his time than telling Harry about the blood spells…)   
  
"You are glad, I think, that this will be your only required dancing for the night?" Félicité teased.   
  
"You are glad, I think, that anyone with whom you dance next will be an improvement," he returned.   
  
Félicité casually flicked her wand at the hand of a Durmstrang student whose attentions Fleur had been unable to dissuade. Fleur met her professor's eyes in a wordless thank you.   
  
"She can take care of herself, but I'd rather she not have to disembowel a student from another school so early in the evening," Félicité explained.   
  
"Understood."   
  
"And it has been my pleasure to dance with you." The music was hitting a breaking point, and they adjourned to opposite sides of the room to keep watch over the students. Before Remus could settle comfortably into the shadows, though, a familiar hand caught his.   
  
"Dance with me, Professor." It was half-request, half-command.  
  
Request or command, he had no desire to resist. He had barely seen Dora for the last sixteen months, had barely touched her, hadn't even let himself think about holding her…   
  
He let her lead him back toward the dance floor. "Look at Mad-Eye dancing with Professor Sinistra," she said. "I will definitely step on your feet, but we'll be less awkward than that at least."   
  
"I don't care how awkward we are as long as I get to dance with you." The words escaped him before he realized what he was saying. Just the feeling of her hand in his was enough to make all rational thoughts flee his mind.   
  
He'd missed her.   
  
He'd missed her deeply, and while seeing her in his classes had been nice, it had been the cheapest substitute for the days they had spent wrapped around each other in the nursery admiring Teddy.   
  
He tried to think of a way to play off what he'd said as a joke— that he felt safer with an Auror close by, that if he was going to dance with an Auror he far preferred her to Scrimgeour, that he had promised Sirius to provide a barrier between her and any overenthusiastic students— but all of the retorts died on his tongue.  
  
"I thought," she whispered as she wrapped one hand around his shoulder, "that you didn't like balls."   
  
"It's important to remain open-minded and consider new points of view," he told her.   
  
But he couldn't consider anything.   
  
When he'd danced with Félicité, she'd been watching Fleur and he'd been watching Harry. They'd been professors performing their duty.   
  
When he danced with Dora, he couldn't believe that there was anyone else in the Great Hall. The raucous, crowded hall was suddenly so quiet that he couldn't hear anything but Dora's breath, Dora's heatbeat, Dora's robes rustling against his own, Dora's hand moving higher up his shoulder.   
  
Her touch was maddening. Her scent was maddening. Her pink hair and her teasing voice were maddening.  
  
It took all of his considerable restraint not to kiss her.   
  
The Weird Sisters struck up a new, faster song. Fred and Angelina began to dance so exuberantly that people around them were backing away in fear of injury.   
  
"One more dance," said Dora. "I dare you."   
  
"I'm not susceptible to dares," said Remus. It was true. It had been a matter of self-preservation, growing up as he had with James and Sirius. He led Dora away from the dance floor, but she, rather than pausing near the edge of the room, tugged him toward the door. "You should all know that you have no expectation of privacy in the rose bushes outside," she shouted over the music to the students. "The Aurors are determined to keep you all safe."   
  
None of the students appeared to notice or care. Karkaroff was now dancing with Professor Sprout, and he, too, seemed unimpressed.   
  
Remus expected Dora to head out the front doors, which were thrown open and decorated with fairy lights. Instead, Dora marched into the nearest empty office, locked the door, and pulled him into a kiss.  
  
Her kisses had always been playful and creative, but this one seemed to split him in two.   
  
Half of him was in a closet of an office at Hogwarts, trying desperately to savor the sensation of her lips against his and keep them both upright as she leaned into him.   
  
Half of him was in Andromeda's kitchen in the future-past, kissing Dora goodbye and asking her not to die along with him at the Battle of Hogwarts.   
  
He trailed his lips down her jawline and nudged her robes aside, kissing the sensitive place where her neck met her shoulder in the way she had always liked. Her gasp of pleasure was gratifying. It also brought him to his senses.   
  
He broke off the kiss and pulled away, feeling a stab of guilt at the expression of betrayal on her heart-shaped face.  
  
"Miss Tonks," he murmured. "Dora. May I please call you Dora? I can't call you Tonks and kiss you that way."   
  
"You may call me Dora only if you want to continue kissing me that way," she said. She said it lightly, joyfully. She was so young. She was so playful, and so vibrant, and so untouched by war and trauma and poverty and pain and rejection.   
  
"Wanting is not the problem," he informed her. He wanted his lips on her neck and his hands under her robes and her legs around his waist.   
  
"What is? Don't say that we work together. There have been at least ten pairs of Hogwarts professors who married each other, and God only knows how many more just shagged. And I'm not even a professor, just a guest."  
  
He almost asked her why on earth she had that particular statistic on the tip of her tongue (was it even correct?) but he couldn't allow himself to be distracted from the task at hand.   
  
This wasn't his Dora. This young woman wasn't on the front lines of a war, wasn't in a rush to live as much life as quickly as possible. This young woman didn't see him as a hero, unless she somehow equated passable classroom management skills with heroism.   
  
His Dora had known all along and she hadn't cared.   
  
This Dora might be more sensible. It might be for the best if she were.  
  
"Well?" she asked impatiently, tapping her foot. "We could snog some more while you're deciding whether you're going to tell me what this terrible, horrible, insurmountable problem is."   
  
"It would be wrong for me to kiss you again without telling you."   
  
"Then I'm going to kiss you. All you'd have to do is kiss back."  
  
There was a major flaw in that logic, and he knew it, but he forgot the instant her lips touched his. He pulled her more tightly against his body and she fit. She fit like she always had no matter how much she shouldn't have.   
  
She slid her hands onto his shoulders and met his gaze with her own. "I know you're not secretly married because Sirius would have told me."  
  
_ Only secretly married to you, Dora, but that's a secret for another day if it ever comes to that. _   
  
"My secret is far more dangerous than that, I'm afraid. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't tell it very well. I've never told anyone before."   
  
"So Sirius doesn't know?" Her eyes sparkled. She'd chosen to be intrigued at the prospect of learning something kept hidden from her cousin rather than terrified that the secret was so terrible that Sirius would have warned her off if he'd known.   
  
Sirius should have warned her off, really. Sirius was quite mad in his way.   
  
And Dora was quite mad in her way. It ran in the family.  
  
"Sirius knows, but not because I told him. He figured it out when we were children."   
  
"Go on," she said, and he was relieved to see her shift her position just slightly so that she would be able to stun him and escape the closet if need be. It seemed that her Auror training had over-ruled her nosiness and her hormones at last.   
  
"I'm a werewolf." His chest tightened so painfully that he thought he might sink to the floor.   
  
She laughed. "Good one, Professor. _Remus_. If I'm Dora, you're certainly _Remus_. With a name like that, no wonder you like a good werewolf joke."   
  
"There's no such thing as a good werewolf joke," he told her.   
  
"Why do werewolves run in circles?" she asked.   
  
"They don't. They run toward the nearest human being to infect him with a potentially fatal, virtually unmanageable disease that will forever ruin his prospects of employment, friendships, or a normal life."   
  
"The answer is, because it's too hard to run in squares."  
  
"My answer was more correct."   
  
"Except that you do have employment, friendships, and a normal life."   
  
"I haven't always." He ran his finger along the sleeve of his dress robes. "Sirius bought these for me because he got tired of seeing me wear rags. This past year and a half at Hogwarts has been the longest I have ever remained employed, and it will end as soon as the wrong student notices that I'm always ill at the full moon."   
  
"Do the staff know?"  
  
"They do."   
  
"What about… Mad-Eye? I know you knew him from the war against Voldemort."   
  
"Yes. He knows. If you need to speak about this I beg of you to speak to Mad-Eye or Sirius rather than telling— telling—"   
  
"I won't tell," she soothed. "I wouldn't do that to you. I wouldn't do that to anyone."   
  
Most annoyingly, a lump rose in his throat.   
  
"Besides, Sirius would probably kill me," she added. She leaned against the wall, deep in thought. "So that's why the nickname. Neither one of you would tell me what it meant. I knew there was something off about that, but I never would have guessed this. Probably because Moony is an absolutely terrible nickname for a werewolf."   
  
"It is," he managed to agree around the lump in his throat. "But I'm rather attached to it at this point. And Sirius and James were only twelve years old, so we can't really hold it against them."   
  
"They found out when you were twelve? You were bitten when you were _twelve_?"  
  
"I was bitten when I was four."  
  
She looked at him with absolute horror. "I didn't think children usually…" she trailed off.   
  
"They don't, usually." It didn't matter what she had meant to say. The answer was the same. _They don't usually survive. They don't usually go to school. They don't usually grow up to pass as sickly, but fully human, 28 nights out of 29._ "My parents were determined that I would live as normal a life as possible, and Dumbledore decided that I should be permitted to attend Hogwarts as long as precautions were taken to protect the other students from me."   
  
"And now he allows you to teach," she concluded. "Dumbledore is the greatest wizard in at least a century, and Mad-Eye is the most paranoid wizard in at least two centuries, and Sirius was my idol from the time I was a toddler, and all three of them…" She didn't usually let her thoughts trail off unfinished this way. He supposed she'd never been in quite this position before.   
  
"Think for yourself, Dora. You're brilliant. You don't need Dumbledore or Mad-Eye or Sirius to decide how you feel."   
  
"Oh, I know how I feel," she said throatily. "What I don't know is what to think."  
  
"Most of what you know about werewolves is wrong," he said, trying to pretend that he was lecturing a class.  
  
"Obviously." She looked to be torn between laughing and crying.   
  
"But one thing you should know is that even when I'm in human form, I can permanently scar you with my teeth or my fingernails. If a kiss— I know that for some people there's a fine line between a kiss and a bite— if that ever happened, it wouldn't infect you but it would leave a permanent mark."   
  
She considered that. "That's actually sexy."   
  
"No," he said. "It is not."   
  
"Agree to disagree," she said, eyes flashing. She knew nothing. She hadn't seen Bill Weasley lying near death, permanently maimed by Fenrir Greyback.   
  
"I'm very careful of my nails. I try not to touch people, especially bare skin. But there was one time. It was my seventh year at school. There was a skirmish in Hogsmeade and I was knocked down. I raked my hand on the cobblestones and I ripped my nail. When I got up, I pulled Sirius out of the way by his arm while I was casting a spell with my other hand. There's a permanent scar on the inside of his right wrist. If you look closely you can see that it's a cursed wound. He tells people that he got it in battle, and that's true, but what he doesn't say is that he got it from someone who was on his own side."   
  
"It's hardly uncommon for Aurors working in a team to curse each other by accident," said Dora. "Sometimes you end up with a scar."   
  
"This is different."  
  
"I don't think it's as different as you think it is."  
  
"You haven't had time to think about it at all."   
  
"No," she admitted. "I should have seen this coming. I didn't."  
  
"I've gotten very good at hiding, and I have a number of people including Albus Dumbledore helping me hide."   
  
"Then why are you telling me? You said you never told anyone else."   
  
"I like you, Dora. That's why I told you."   
  
"I like you, too," she said. "And thank you."  
  
They had come as far as they could come, he decided, and they were after all meant to be working. "Care to patrol the rose gardens before we return to the Great Hall?" he asked.   
  
"You go," she said. "I've been away from the Great Hall for too long."   
  
And he let her go.   
  
He noticed her several times during the night as he broke up fights, strongly suggested to students that they not drink anything stronger than butterbeer, and conjured handkerchiefs for two or three sobbing girls.  
  
He and Dora didn't speak again.  
  
He counted down the moments until midnight, when he removed Harry from what appeared to be a rather intense conversation with Ron and escorted him upstairs to meet Sirius.

* * *

  
Remus had expected Harry to bombard them with questions about blood magic and horrible relatives and secrets left unshared.  
Instead, Harry asked them whether it was true that Hagrid was half-giant.   
  
Sirius and Remus looked at each other. "Yes. Why?" they replied in unison.   
  
"I knew it was true. I heard him say it to Madame Maxime."  
  
"Also half-giant," said Remus.   
  
"She says she's not."   
  
"Considering the prejudices giants face, you can hardly blame her for denying it."   
  
"Is the wizarding world prejudiced about everything?" Harry asked.   
  
"Yes," said Sirius and Remus.   
  
"I don't get the impression that the Muggle world is any better," said Sirius.   
  
"It's not," agreed Remus.  
  
"Are any of the other professors not completely— are any of them vampires or house-elves or part centaur or anything?"   
  
"Professor Flitwick has some goblin ancestry," said Sirius.   
  
"Really?" asked Harry.   
  
"You don't know that for sure," Remus told Sirius.   
  
"And I suppose we don't know for sure about Hagrid, either?"   
  
"Muggles can be that small, though," said Harry. "The can't be as big as Hagrid."   
  
"Nonetheless, Professor Flitwick has goblin ancestry."  
  
"And is one of the kindest human beings you could ever endeavor to meet," said Remus.   
  
"He can afford to be, considering he's also a dueling champion," said Sirius.   
  
"That part I knew," said Harry. "But I don't know the things that people who grew up around wizards know. You should have seen Ron's face when I asked why it mattered that Hagrid is half-giant. Hagrid could be sacked, couldn't he?" Harry asked Remus. "Like you would be if people found out about you?"   
  
"It would not be pleasant for Hagrid if his heritage became common knowledge," agreed Remus. "But I don't believe he would be sacked. Several generations of students have known Hagrid to be kind and gentle. The parents of current students would write letters of support, not letters complaining that their children are in danger."   
  
"Some stupid people would write stupid letters complaining that their stupid children are in danger," Sirius corrected.   
  
"Not enough to get him sacked."   
  
"No, not enough to get him sacked."  
  
"Does that mean that if Professor Lupin teaches here for twenty years before it comes out that he's a werewolf, he might not get sacked either?"   
  
"That's not likely," said Remus. "But, Harry, I know that Hagrid having a giantess mother is not the only thing you learned today."  
He had expected Harry to look at him with anger or even betrayal. Instead, Harry looked nothing more than disappointed. "You should have told me," he said. "You both should have told me before."   
  
"We were afraid of breaking the spell, and we hoped that we'd be able to find a way to remove the threat before the summer."  
  
"You're trying to kill Voldemort for real?"   
  
"It's not that simple," said Sirius. "We're trying to destroy the things that make him immortal."   
  
Remus raised an eyebrow, but he didn't object. In the future-past, so much had stemmed from Harry's lack of real information. Sirius had always known better than anyone else what Harry was ready to hear, and when.   
  
"What sorts of things?" asked Harry.   
  
"You've seen one," said Sirius. "The diary you destroyed at the end of your second year. That wasn't just a diary."   
  
"Well obviously, it wrote back and showed the past and possessed people."   
  
"It was a bit of Voldemort's soul."   
  
Harry's eyes widened behind his glasses. "There are more bits?"  
  
"There are," confirmed Remus. "And I'd ask you to be very careful with whom you discuss that information." He had an overpowering sense of deja vu. He trusted Dora not to tell anyone about his lycanthropy. He trusted Sirius to know when Harry was ready to learn about blood spells and Horcruxes. He trusted Harry to know when to keep his mouth shut.   
  
All of that trusting was exhausting. Being the one person in control of dangerous information had been lonely, but it had felt so safe.   
  
"It's like in Quidditch," Sirius explained quickly. "They don't publish lists of all of the different sorts of fouls because they don't want people to get ideas. And you won't find a word about Horcruxes— that's what the fragment of a soul attached to an object is called— in the Hogwarts library for the exact same reason. You need to commit murder to create a Horcrux, but that's no deterrent to someone who wants to be immortal."  
  
Harry, looking very pale, nodded his understanding.   
  
"Are we telling you too much?" asked Sirius.   
  
"No," said Harry. "It's about me. I want to know. Is there more?"   
  
"There is," said Sirius. "But I'm not sure you should hear it all at once. If you want more time to think about—"   
  
"You sound like Dumbledore," said Harry. "He always thinks I'm too young to hear about myself." Sirius appeared to take offense. Harry appeared not to care. "Why did Voldemort want to kill me when I was a baby?"  
  
Sirius glanced at Remus and Remus decided to answer (leaving out a few salient facts, and he didn't care whether that made him sound like Dumbledore or not). "There was a prophecy that said that a boy born in July whose parents had defied Voldemort three times would be the one with the power to defeat him. You were one of the children who fit that description so he decided to kill you before you had a chance to use your power to defeat him."   
  
"So it was because of me that he killed my parents?"  
  
"He wanted them dead anyway," said Sirius quickly. "He tried before you were even born. Like the prophecy says, he came close three separate times."   
  
"But I don't have any power to defeat him. If we were playing Quidditch I could probably get to the Snitch before him, but I don't think he'd mind about that."   
  
"I imagine not," said Sirius. "And anyway, prophecies are rubbish. Most of them don't ever come true. You weren't even the only baby who fit the criteria."   
  
"So why did he choose me?"   
  
Sirius and Remus glanced at each other once more. "We don't know," said Remus.  
  
"We can ask him when we find him, but I doubt he'll be very cooperative," added Sirius. "And that really is enough for now, Harry. When my name was cleared and Remus started filling me in on the things I missed, I… I demanded everything all at once and it was too much. We can discuss the details every day if you want, but it's too late tonight to give you anything more to think about."   
  
The expression on Harry's face was mutinous. "Sirius didn't make any of these decisions, Harry," said Remus quietly. "I would hate for you to be angry with him for something that wasn't in his control."  
  
"I'm not."   
  
Remus didn't say anything in his own defense. Harry had every right to be angry with him. "Is anything else bothering you so much that you have to have an answer right now?"  
  
Harry thought about it.  
  
_ Please don't ask for the exact wording of the prophecy. Please don't ask how I happen to know most of the things we just told you. _   
  
"You said people don't know about the Horcruxes, but who else knows about the prophecy? Is that another thing that everyone who grew up in the wizarding world knows? Like giants and who decides what score you get on your OWL?"   
  
The reference to the OWL exams was a bit of a non sequitur to Remus, but the professor in him was pleased that Harry had given them any thought at all.   
  
The similarity to Dora was disconcerting, even if it had been a wise question for both Dora and Harry to ask. _Who else knows?_   
  
"It's not common knowledge at all," Remus told Harry. "Dumbledore knows, of course, and some of his inner circle. During the war they used to be called the Order of the Phoenix."   
  
"Do all of the professors know?"   
  
"Professor McGonagall does." He made an effort to keep his voice perfectly neutral. "As does Professor Snape."   
  
"Why does Snape know?" demanded Sirius.  
  
"Dumbledore trusts him almost above all others," said Remus as lightly as he could.   
  
"So Snape will probably tell everyone the next time he's in a worse mood than usual," said Harry glumly.   
  
"He hasn't yet," Remus pointed out.   
  
"He won't want to," said Sirius. "Makes your family sound too heroic."   
  
Unsurprisingly, Harry seemed more comforted by Sirius' words than Remus'.  
  
Sirius threw his arm over Harry's shoulders and Harry leaned into the touch. Remus smiled tiredly at the sight. For now, at least, there was no real rift between Harry and Sirius.   
  
"We should be going," Sirius said. "Enough revelations for one night. Unless Filch declared his love for Madam Pince at the Yule Ball and you've neglected to tell me?"   
  
Harry groaned.   
  
"On that subject, Sirius, you should know that I did tell Tonks," Remus put in.   
  
"Tell Tonks what?"   
  
"About my furry little problem."  
  
Sirius whistled. "And?"  
  
"She said she wouldn't tell anyone."   
  
"Of course she wouldn't. She's not horrible."   
  
Not horrible. But not a woman in love, either.   
  
It had been a very long Christmas.  
  
_** To be continued. ** _


	33. Tonks Interlude C

Tonks worked without a break for two days after Christmas so that her more senior colleagues could have extra time with their families. She was glad to do it; she hoped that, one day in the distant future, she would want to spend the holiday with her own children and her junior colleagues would be pleasant about the situation.   
  
She spent the bulk of her time casually sorting through leads that had been sent to the Ministry. Almost everything could wait. The criminals seemed to be on holiday, too.   
  
By late afternoon on the second day, the Auror office had grown so quiet that it felt as if the world had ended. She had caught up on her paperwork. She had caught up on other peoples' paperwork to the extent that she knew what their paperwork was meant to say. She had read everything she'd been meaning to read if she'd ever gotten the extra time. She had quizzed herself on advanced poison antidotes using the chart on the wall and had practiced emergency body binds on a training dummy.  
  
The Auror office wasn't meant to be this empty, this lacking in urgency.   
  
The Auror office wasn't meant to be this lonely. Aurors were team.   
  
She hated quiet, emptiness, and loneliness. If she'd wanted to be alone with her thoughts, she would have become a wandmaker or a magical historian instead of an Auror.   
  
She stood in front of the mirror beside Maria Gordon's desk and morphed her hair into dozens of colors.  
  
She paced the perimeter of the office and hoped that something would catch her eye.   
  
She considered sending an owl to her parents, who she had seen not 48 hours before.   
  
She considered sending owls to Tulip and Penny, but she'd done that the day before.   
  
She considered sending an owl to Remus Lupin, but she didn't know what she would say.   
  
She paced the perimeter of the office once more, this time with more urgency as her gaze drifted over reports and photographs left abandoned on desks and shelves. She found what she was looking for on the shelf above Williamson's desk.   
  
The file was dusty and obviously hadn't been handled in some time. It was spell-locked, but only with the simplest spell any Auror could remove without much effort.  
  
_Guardian_ , read the fading print across the top of the file. _Fenrir Greyback._   
  
On the inside cover was a photograph of a snarling man with matted grey hair and unkempt whiskers. His teeth were pointed and yellowing. There were open sores on his face. _This_ was what she thought about when she thought about werewolves. She didn't think of soft smiles and carefully tended nails, of measured tones of voice and a deftly wielded wand. She didn't think of werewolves as being funny and well-read. She didn't think of werewolves as wearing dress robes to Yule Balls and conjuring handkerchiefs for crying fifteen-year-old girls.  
  
She didn't even think of werewolves as being _clean_.   
  
The next page was a brief biography of Greyback. Very little was known. He had been born in approximately 1945 and had become a werewolf sometime around 1960. He had joined forces with You-Know-Who around 1970, and, like many Death Eaters, had vanished for some time after You-Know-Who's downfall in 1981. He had not been part of You-Know-Who's inner circle, but had made himself uniquely valuable to You-Know-Who by threatening to bite the children of anyone who displeased him.   
  
Greyback made biting children his particular mission. He was responsible for the deaths of some three dozen children, most of them Muggles. He preferred to allow wizarding children to live; the expectation was that their parents would abandon them and they would accordingly be raised by a werewolf pack. Most wizarding parents preferred to put their children out of their misery.  
  
_ Put their children out of their misery. _   
  
Tonks shivered.   
  
Most children who survived a werewolf attack were killed by their own parents.   
  
That was what Remus' parents would have been expected to do, and they hadn't.   
  
Fittingly, the next several pages of the file were devoted to methods of killing werewolves. (The bottom line was that _Avada Kedavra_ worked as well as anything. At the end of the day, you killed a werewolf the same way you killed a human being, but it resulted in less paperwork.)   
  
The pages after that contained a gruesome series of photographs of cursed wounds. Remus had been right to worry about his nails and teeth. The scratches and bites attributed to Greyback—in his human form!—were horrifying.   
  
They weren't nearly as horrifying as the photographs of dead children murdered by Greyback. Greyback had been convicted of their murders, but he had escaped capture several times in the mid-1980s.   
  
The next photographs were of known members of Greyback's "pack." Most were terribly thin and dirty. There were shadows under their eyes and half-healed cuts on their faces. Some were missing teeth; others had misshapen arms from broken bones that had never been healed properly. A few were noted to be functionally illiterate.  
  
None of them looked like professors.   
  
Remus looked like a professor.  
  
The final page was dedicated to Greyback's last known whereabouts. He had not been seen for years and was not considered a priority. The last confirmed sighting had been in Bavaria in 1990, but he was suspected of having been in Rutland in 1992.  


Tonks closed and relocked the file.  
  
She resumed pacing the perimeter of the office until Proudfoot arrived and, smiling, told her to recapture the holiday spirit. He would be available if there were any emergencies that night.  
  
She told him that nothing had happened all day.   
  
When she returned to her flat, Penny's owl was waiting for her with a request that they meet that evening to exchange presents and watch a Muggle film. "Perfect," she informed the owl as she fastened a hastily jotted response to its leg. She took a shower, changed into her favorite Muggle outfit, and stuffed Penny's Christmas gift into her bag.   
  
She didn't want to be alone in the quiet. She hoped the film Penny had in mind was loud.  


* * *

  
The film wasn't loud— it was the romantic comedy one could expect Penny to choose— but there were some rather funny moments and a good deal of swearing, so Tonks considered it a worthwhile use of her time.  
  
"I'm so glad you were able to come," Penny said, looping her arm through Tonks' as they left the cinema. "I didn't want you to be the only person in Britain who knows what a cinema is but who didn't see _Four Weddings and a Funeral _this year."  
  
"How many times have you seen it?"   
  
"Three," said Penny, looking slightly embarrassed. "But how did you like it?"  
  
"I liked it."   
  
Penny abruptly stopped moving. "Really," she said. "What did you really think?"   
  
"I really liked it." Tonks grinned. "Well, I didn't like them using _Duckface_ as an insult." She summoned her magic and morphed her nose and mouth into a duck's bill. Penny dissolved into giggles. "I think I look very nice, and not at all like someone who should be jilted at the altar."  
  
"Stop it," Penny spluttered around her laughter. "Someone might see."   
  
Tonks let her face return to its usual state. "Poor Duckface, though," she mused.   
  
"She's better off not being married to a man who doesn't love her."   
  
"Did you know men were so attracted to women who can't tell whether it's raining or not?"  
  
"She knew it was raining. She was just so happy to be with him that that's not what she was thinking about." Penny giggled again.    
  
Even if Tonks had genuinely disliked the film, she would have been pleased to watch it if it made Penny smile this much.   
  
Then Penny stopped smiling. "Is this about your professor?" she asked.   
  
"I kissed him at the Yule Ball." Saying it aloud brought the moment back to her with dizzying clarity.   
  
"And? He kissed you back?"   
  
"Yes."  
  
"Was he a bad kisser?"   
  
"No." Tonks disentangled herself from Penny and slumped against the nearest brick wall, gazing up at the sky. Only the brightest stars were visible through the Muggles' electric lights. "It was the best kiss I've ever had and it wasn't even close. It was like he'd kissed me a thousand times and he knew what to do to make me feel good even before I knew. It was amazing."  
  
"Romantic!" Penny exclaimed, her smile brighter than ever. "I bet you wouldn't have noticed if it had been raining."   
  
"Maybe," Tonks admitted. "Maybe it was just that he's so much older. I haven't dated anyone for two years because work took up all of my time."   
  
"I know."  
  
"So everyone I've ever kissed before— not that there were that many— was a boy. Classmates. Teenagers. Of course they didn't know what Remus knows." _Remus_. No matter what, he was _Remus_ now, not _Professor Lupin_. "He's an adult. A man, not a boy. A man almost old enough to be my father."   
  
"That didn't seem to bother you before. It does now?"  
  
It didn't, but she couldn't very well tell Penny what was bothering her. Remus had entrusted her with his secret and she intended to keep it. And she didn't need to tell Penny to know what Penny would say.  
  
_ "When I was twelve years old, I watched a werewolf kill my best friend Scarlett. You know there's a werewolf in a school full of helpless children, and you're not saying anything about it? You kissed him? You're considering kissing him again?" _   
  
Penny hated werewolves. Penny feared werewolves. Every time Penny faced a boggart, it turned into a werewolf. Penny, who was kind and loving to everyone she met, made an exception for werewolves. Penny would not be able to wrap her thoughts around the idea of Tonks hungering for the touch of a werewolf. Penny, who had always been so supportive of everything her friends did, would have demanded to know whether Tonks had lost her mind.   
  
"It's difficult," Tonks said. "How do you know when the differences between you and someone you like are too big?"   
  
"I don't think you usually know after one kiss," said Penny.  
  
It was a reasonable point even though Penny didn't know what they were talking about. Penny was clever that way.

* * *

  
A few hours after she left Penny, Tonks was woken from a restless sleep (Fenrir Greyback featured in her dreams) by Proudfoot's voice. "Come into the office now if you can. We have a dark wizard that needs catching."   
  
That sounded much better than restless sleep. It took her ninety seconds to dress and return to the office.   
  
Proudfoot was bouncing on his toes with eagerness when Tonks arrived. In quick succession, Dawlish and Mad-Eye appeared. Tonks couldn't help smiling. Mad-Eye was supposed to be half-retired, but when the call came for volunteers for a last minute post-Christmas takedown, he could be counted on to present himself.   
  
"Four's enough," Proudfoot decided. "He's in a house near Appleby. Apparate to the base there."  
  
Tonks' heart pounded and sang. There was nothing better than catching a dark wizard before he could hurt anyone else. The only thing that came close was the thrill of working with her team.   
  
She couldn't believe that weeks before she had turned down an offer to take part in a major capture because she'd wanted to work at Hogwarts. What kind of person turned down this kind of excitement and camaraderie over a crush on a werewolf? She hadn't spent her entire life working toward being selected as an Auror to give up moments like these.   
  
They Apparated to the Appleby base, which was nothing more than a shed. Aurors had bases like these all around Britain for purposes of emergency Apparition to a problem area. She had spent a week memorizing all of the locations and Apparating to them when she'd first been selected for the training program. Learning them had been one of the easiest parts of qualifying.   
  
The wizard they were chasing was called Sheridan Sherwood, but everyone knew him as Shadow. He vanished every time an Auror (or anyone else associated with the Ministry) got too close. He had been accused, and convicted, of practicing dark magic on Muggles. He at least had the decency to wipe the memories of those who survived.   
  
The four of them walked in lockstep, following Proudfoot's directions.   
  
"Tonks and Dawlish will stay back and cast shield charms," Proudfoot said, to no one's surprise. When you outnumbered your target four to one, it was standard practice for the two least senior Aurors to be relegated to defense. It didn't matter to Tonks. She positioned herself behind Mad-Eye and readied her shield charm.  
  
Then Proudfoot's plans evaporated with a quiet "he's not alone" from Dawlish.   
  
Dawlish was right. There were three other wizards in the house. It would be four against four, not four against one.  
  
"We'll go for him anyway," Proudfoot decided. "Spread out." Tonks could see that Mad-Eye and Dawlish agreed. She, too, approved. She adjusted her stance and stepped away from Mad-Eye. She was ready to duel, to subdue, to capture. She was smart enough to handle anything Shadow and his associates threw at her.   
  
It didn't mean anything that she hadn't been smart enough to realize she'd been working with a werewolf— one of the darkest creatures in existence. Remus was clever and Dumbledore himself had been helping him hide.  
  
Tonks and Mad-Eye entered through the front while Dawlish and Proudfoot entered through the back.  
  
" _ Expelliarmus _ !"   
  
Tonks almost lost her wand a fraction of a second after the fight began. She regrouped and sent ropes out of the end of her wand to wrap around the smallest, weakest wizard. He tumbled into an umbrella stand fashioned from a troll leg. She'd only seen an an umbrella stand like that once before: in her family's ancestral home at Grimmauld Place.   
  
The one time she'd visited Grimmauld Place, she'd asked Sirius all kinds of questions about Remus Lupin and he'd evaded her. Next time she saw Sirius she'd demand to know what he was thinking, telling her to dance with Remus, and if Sirius thought he was going to be self-righteous about it all—  
  
At the last second, she diverted the spell that would have decapitated her. Mad-Eye had disarmed his man and turned to help Dawlish, but the man had had a spare wand. He aimed at her a second time; she evaded on pure instinct before disarming him properly and trussing him up beside his comrade. One of the others had taken down the third man. Only Shadow himself was left standing. All Tonks had to do was keep out of the way and watch the three captives while the other Aurors handled Shadow.   
  
The curse hit her full in the stomach. She noticed blood seeping from her every orifice.   
  
She was unconscious before she hit the floor.

* * *

  
When she revived, she was in a bed in Saint Mungo's and two Healers were talking unconcernedly as they reviewed a chart of some kind.   
  
"Are the others all right?" she asked.   
  
The two of them turned so quickly it was almost comical. But Tonks wasn't prepared to find anything funny until she had her answer.   
  
"You were the only one who was injured," one of the Healers told her. "And you will be just fine very soon. Nasty curse, but quickly corrected."   
  
"Can I talk to… Is anyone waiting for me?"  
  
"Mr. Moody may visit you in a few minutes, just as soon as we've checked your bandage and you've drunk your potions."  
Tonks submitted to the examination with more than a little impatience. She needed to see Mad-Eye. She needed to confirm for herself that he and Dawlish and Proudfoot hadn't been injured by her stupidity.   
  
Her mind had been elsewhere during a fight.   
  
That was not acceptable.  
  
She drank the proffered potion and it made her sleepy.

* * *

  
She was barely able to lift her head from her pillow to look at Mad-Eye, but she forced herself to do it. She'd been distracted during a dangerous mission and she'd put herself in danger. Worse, she'd put other Aurors in danger. She deserved to see disappointment and reprimand etched across Mad-Eye's face.  
  
Instead she saw worry and fear.   
  
That was worse.   
  
"I'm ready to be told off, Mad-Eye," she said. Her voice sounded feeble to her own ears.  
  
"Put your head down before you faint again."   
  
She obeyed. She was always going to listen to Mad-Eye in the future. No more jokes about his paranoia. No more seeing just how far she could push him.   
  
"The Healer says you can go home in a few hours. Want me to Floo your parents?"   
  
"No need to worry them," she said wearily.  
  
"Shouldn't they be worried?" His prosthetic leg clunked against the floor as he made his way to her bedside and sat down next to her.   
  
"If I can go home in a few hours, they don't need to worry. They already know that Aurors get injured on the job. They worry enough."   
  
"Very noble of you." He leaned closer, and she closed her eyes for an instant, savoring the sensation of his nearness. The safest place in the world was the room where Alastor Moody happened to be. "Or perhaps very stupid of you."  
  
She smiled without opening her eyes. "There's the Mad-Eye I know and love."   
  
"We're off the record, Tonks. Scrimgeour will want a formal interview from you tomorrow, but this isn't that. This is personal. What happened? When you first came to me as an eighteen-year-old with no clue and smart mouth, you wouldn't have made the mistakes you made today. You almost got yourself hit three times before this happened." He gestured at her bandaged stomach.  
  
"I didn't know you noticed."   
  
"An Auror notices."   
  
"Yeah."   
  
"You have a responsibility to say no to an assignment that comes at the wrong time. If you knew that you weren't yourself today, you should have told someone before you jumped in."  
  
"Yes," she agreed. "I should have."   
  
"This isn't a war. There was no need for you to take that risk. The Ministry just finished training you. It would be a waste if you got yourself killed before you were of any use."   
  
"My purpose in this life is to irritate you. The Ministry understands and appreciates that."   
  
"Possibly," allowed Mad-Eye. "But I don't. This is the last time I'm going to ask you, Tonks. What were you thinking about?"   
  
"Werewolves," she breathed. "I was thinking about werewolves."  
  
She felt rather than saw Mad-Eye's body go tense with worry. "Did a tip come in over the holidays? Have there been reports of bites? Fenrir Greyback is out there somewhere, I'd love to see him in Azkaban, but you have no business tracking him alone."   
  
"Not Fenrir Greyback," she said. "Remus Lupin."  
  
"The professor? What about him?" asked Mad-Eye. His studied nonchalance was a thing of beauty. Oh, how she wanted to be the sort of Auror Mad-Eye was.   
  
"You missed your true calling, Mad-Eye. You should have been a poker player with that face."   
  
"No one wants to sit at a table with this face," he grumbled, gesturing at his scars and his false eye.   
  
"Remus told me that he's a werewolf. He told me that he was bitten when he was four years old. He told me that you knew because you worked together in the war against You-Know-Who."   
  
Mad-Eye grunted his acknowledgement that she wasn't trying to trick information out of him. "Why, pray tell, would Lupin tell you those things?"   
  
"Because I kissed him at the Yule Ball."  
  
Mad-Eye's real eye and his false eye rolled themselves heavenward. "Was it your job to protect children from a known Death Eater, or was it your job to kiss the Defense professor?"   
  
"I was on a break when I kissed him," said Tonks. "Karkaroff was dancing with Professor Sprout at the time, so I thought she would notice right away if he started murdering students."  
  
Mad-Eye didn't laugh.   
  
"I thought it was just a crush," she continued. "I didn't think there would be any harm in one kiss. When I was in school, I never forgot that I was there to learn to be an Auror. I didn't do things like swoon over the Defense professor. Maybe I wanted to make up for that a little bit. I don't know. I liked him. He's smart and he's funny and he's kind and he's patient and he's a great friend to Sirius."  
  
"I like all of those things about Lupin, too," said Mad-Eye neutrally.  
  
"And he has this look in his eye sometimes. Like he's alert to things he shouldn't be. Like he's been everywhere and seen everything and he can handle it all. It's…" She stopped just short of telling Mad-Eye that the look in Remus' eye was sexy. She was never again going to have an important conversation with Mad-Eye while her head was swimming with pain-relieving potions. "It's appealing," she finished lamely. "It's not what I imagined a werewolf being. I feel like a fool for not noticing that the days you were covering his classes for him were always the days after the full moons. I thought that once I qualified as an Auror, I'd know everything and it turns out that I still don't know anything."  
  
"You're never going to know everything. Dumbledore himself doesn't know everything."   
  
"He knew enough not to kiss any werewolves."  
  
"We aren't going to discuss who Dumbledore did and did not kiss." Mad-Eye sighed, and Tonks hated how much older it made him seem. She hated that she had made him feel that way. "Why do you think I always ask if you're meeting your boyfriend?" he asked.   
  
"Because ninety percent of Aurors are male and you can't imagine that I don't need a man in my life to take me away from the Office?"  
  
"My sainted dead mother was an Auror, you ignorant brat," Mad-Eye rumbled playfully. Tonks laughed. It hurt. She couldn't stifle her cry of pain. "Should I call the Healer?" Mad-Eye asked when she'd caught her breath.   
  
"No," she said. "But don't make me laugh again."   
  
"I'll stop trying to be funny if you do."  
  
"Deal. But only for today."   
  
"I wouldn't dare hope for more."   
  
She focused on the pain in her stomach and forced herself to be serious. "I didn't think you asking if I was meeting my boyfriend meant anything. I thought it was just a joke about how being a new Auror doesn't leave any time for romance."   
  
"There's truth to that," he said. "But I wanted to see how you were getting on with compartmentalizing. There have been great Aurors who had families. They knew how to put that part of themselves away when they were in a hot place on the job. The same way a good Auror learns how to look at a child who has just been murdered by a dark wizard and focuses on catching that wizard instead of sitting on the ground and crying."  
  
She'd heard about compartmentalizing many times in training. They'd given her aptitude tests. They'd shown her bloody, broken bodies and then asked her to perform a complex transfiguration before dueling her trainer. She'd been good at it. She'd passed.   
  
She hadn't been as good as she'd thought she'd been. "I need to get better," she said. "I will get better."  
  
"You do, and you will."   
  
"Do you think I should ask to be taken off of the Hogwarts rotation?"  
  
"I'd be very disappointed in you if you did."   
  
"Right." She turned the thought over in her sluggish, pain-filled mind. "I can't learn if I run away from the problem. Now I just need to know what the problem is."  
  
"What are the possibilities?" he asked, and it felt for all the world like she was back in training when he'd knocked her out a dozen times in a row, then asked her to critique her own performance before she'd even caught her breath.   
  
Was she afraid of him?   
  
No. She wasn't afraid of him. He wasn't frightening. Frighteningly conscientious, perhaps, but that was different.   
  
Was she bothered by her own attraction to him?   
  
No. Kissing him had been too damn good to be a bad thing.   
  
Was she embarrassed that she hadn't realized that she was flirting with a werewolf when Mad-Eye and Sirius had known?   
  
No. She simply didn't embarrass that easily. From the time she'd learned to walk, her utter clumsiness had given her plenty of practice at recovering when she'd made a spectacle of herself.   
  
Was she disconcerted to discover that she, who had always prided herself as singularly unprejudiced— the Metamorphmagus granddaughter of both Muggles and isolationist purebloods— had held completely inaccurate views about werewolves, and she hadn't even known it?   
  
That seemed more like it.   
  
Why hadn't she told him right away, right away, that it didn't matter if he was sick?   
  
"It's an illness, isn't it?" she asked Mad-Eye. "It doesn't make the person good or bad."   
  
"Very true," said Mad-Eye. "Though you'd find some who would disagree."   
  
She had no desire to be one of some.

* * *

  
The first thing she did when she returned home was attach a note to her owl's leg and send it off to Hogwarts.  
  
_ Remus—   
_   
_ I've thought about it.   
_   
_ I don't care.   
_   
_ —Dora _   
  
_** To be continued ** _


	34. Sirius, Hunting

When Sirius had let Harry go at the end of the summer, it had been an agony. Letting him go at the end of the Christmas holidays was no more pleasant, but this time Sirius was inspired. Telling Harry some of the secrets that surrounded his destiny had lit a fire in Sirius’ brain not unlike the one that had consumed him when he’d first spotted Wormtail’s picture in the Daily Prophet. 

He and Remus had been stalled in their Horcrux hunt for too long. Moony was busy with teaching, seducing Nymphadora, and turning into a bloodthirsty monster once a month. Sirius, though, had nothing but time.

They were operating under the assumption that Voldemort had intended to make six Horcruxes, seven being the powerful number that it was. (There was, of course, the accidental eighth, Harry himself. Sirius didn’t like to think about it even if he was reasonably certain that Harry could survive the extraction.)

At first the idea of a Horcrux hunt had seemed overwhelming: the Horcruxes could be anywhere.

Most likely, though, the Horcruxes weren’t anywhere. Most likely, the Horcruxes were where Voldemort had put them.

First: The diary, given to Lucius Malfoy and already destroyed.

Second: The diadem, hidden at Hogwarts and awaiting destruction.

Third: Something, hidden in Bellatrix’s vault if Remus’ knowledge of Harry breaking into Gringotts in the future was to make any sense.

Fourth: Voldemort himself, biding his time in Albania if things were the same as they had been the first time. 

Fifth: Unknown.

Sixth: Unknown.

Seventh: Unknown. 

Unknown wasn’t unknowable. How to keep a teenage werewolf from ripping himself to shreds once a month had been unknown until Sirius and James had made it known.

He couldn’t start by figuring out where the Horcruxes were. He had to start by figuring out where Voldemort would put them. 

Sirius had spent twelve years in Azkaban. He wasn’t afraid of taking a journey into Voldemort’s brain. It couldn’t be worse than the dementors.

Death Eaters aside, there weren’t many people alive who would be able to tell Sirius much about how Voldemort thought. There was Dumbledore, of course, but if Sirius said a word to Dumbledore, Dumbledore would draw conclusions that Sirius wouldn’t want drawn. But who else would have been at Hogwarts when Voldemort— Tom Riddle, as he had been when he’d created the diary—had wandered the Slytherin dungeons?

Sirius smiled to himself. Horace Slughorn would have been there, and Andromeda had said at Christmas dinner that she was still in touch with old Sluggy.

On the first day of the new Hogwarts term, Sirius invited himself to Andromeda’s house for lunch. Andromeda, as always, looked pleased to see him. Sirius liked that about Anna.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Andromeda asked.

“I simply came to bask in wonder at the magnificence that is my favorite cousin.”

She looked at him through half-closed, watchful eyes. (The expression made her look very much like her father. For the sake of all humanity, Sirius kept this observation to himself.) “What do you want?”

“A reintroduction to Horace Slughorn.”

She put quill to parchment right away. “Why should I tell him you want to see him?”

“I want to reconnect with as many people from my past as I can now that I’m out among the living again.”

“Why do you actually want to see him?” 

“I think he knows things I want to know.”

“About what?”

“Voldemort.”

Andromeda flinched at the name, but didn’t correct him. “This has to do with protecting Harry?”

“It does.”

“Being a parent suits you, Sirius,” she said, and her casual bestowing upon him the title of _parent_ went straight to his heart. “Was Harry all right at Christmas? He seemed… overwhelmed. Though I imagine we would all be overwhelmed if we had to be the Boy Who Lived.”

“Less about being the Boy Who Lived and more about never having been at a proper family Christmas dinner before,” Sirius said. “I have to get him away from his Muggle relatives. They’re no better than our wizard relatives.”

Andromeda’s face darkened with memories. “Then we will have to make certain your reintroduction to Sluggy is perfect. Did you bother to attend Slug Club meetings at school? I’m certain he invited you. He was fascinated with you, just maddened with curiosity when you weren’t Sorted into Slytherin.”

“I went sometimes.” Lily had been Slughorn’s particular favorite above all others. Where Lily went, James usually went, and where James went, Sirius usually went. 

“Good. That makes this easier. I’ll send crystalized pineapple with the letter, and you make certain to bring a bottle of mead when you go to meet him.” 

“I can do that.”

“It’s a shame we didn’t have this conversation last month. I would have brought you to his annual Slug Club Christmas Reunion as my date if I’d known.”

“Wouldn’t Ted have been jealous?” Sirius sank into a chair and kicked it up onto two legs while Andromeda finished writing.

“Ted knows I’m not the sort of Black to go on dates with my cousin other than as friends.”

It was disconcerting to hear Andromeda so casually refer to herself as a Black. He wondered if she did it only when she was talking to him. Months ago, Ted had said something about how Andromeda had missed being able to talk about her childhood with someone else who remembered it. 

“You go to his Slug Club reunions?” he asked Andromeda, because he wasn’t about to tell her what he was thinking.

“Some years. Usually. I don’t think you were old enough to understand what was going on when it happened, but he was the only adult who helped Ted and me. I asked him to assign us to be partners in his class and pretend it had been his own idea and his mind couldn’t be changed when I objected. It was the only time Ted and I could be seen together in public and not have anyone report back to my parents. I treasure those memories and I’ll always be grateful for it.” She signed the letter with a flourish and called to her owl, who swooped in out of nowhere to accept the message.

“Why do you suppose he did it?”

“A potions master isn’t allowed to be a romantic? Moved by the beauty of young love?”

“No,” said Sirius.

Andromeda laughed. “I think he was, but he had other reasons too. He was the Head of House for a group of future Death Eaters, including Bellatrix.”

“And Regulus.”

“And Regulus, and likely Narcissa whether she officially swore fealty to You-Know-Who or not. I think he considered it a victory every time one of his students turned away from pureblood mania. I watched him at it. He was smart, and he was subtle. I’m sure Lucius Malfoy and the others thought Sluggy was their man, but he wasn’t. That was why I risked asking him for what I wanted and counting on his discretion. He was in a position to get what he wanted by giving me what I wanted. You’ll notice that he retired as soon as You-Know-Who fell. His job— his real job, more that teaching students how to brew an obscure potion they could buy at the apothecary if they ever needed it— was done.”

Sirius had never thought about that. He’d gotten himself Sorted into Gryffindor; he’d never had to think about it.

“He would have made sure you did well in Slytherin,” said Andromeda, reading his thoughts. “He’d have found a way to protect you.”

Sirius wasn’t at all sure that Andromeda was right, but she was doing him a favor and so he didn’t argue.

* * *

The response from Slughorn came within a day. Sirius collected the finest bottle of mead he’d been able to finagle out of the merchants in Diagon Alley and Apparated to the address on the invitation. 

Slughorn greeted him in a garrulous, friendly sort of way that made Sirius feel as if the last twenty years hadn’t passed. They discussed Andromeda (“she speaks so highly of you”) and Harry (“I’m afraid Potions isn’t his favorite subject, as he prefers Defense”) and Sirius’ dealings with the Ministry (“yes, I pushed Minister Fudge to make less use of dementors”) before Slughorn said that he supposed they ought to taste the mead Sirius had brought. 

The taste was rather extraordinary. It had been worth the exorbitant amount of galleons it had cost, and Sirius regretted that he would have to be careful to consume very little of it. He could not risk a clouded head. 

“The best mead you can get legally,” Slughorn opined. “Not that I would know about the illegal sorts, of course. I know Andromeda’s daughter was the only person accepted into the Auror program in— how long?”

“A number of years, at least,” said Sirius. “Nymphadora— of course, she wants to be called Tonks now— gives me someone to practice dueling with since I’ve had to relearn with the new wand.”

“If that’s what you want to do with yourself, have you considered one of the elute dueling clubs? They’re invitation-only, but do you know Griffith Ellis? Never mind, I’ll ask him to have you as his guest next time around, and if you’re as quick as you used to be they’ll ask you back.” 

The thought of joining a dueling club hadn’t occurred to him, and he didn’t know Griffith Ellis at all, but it was a good idea. He told Slughorn so and thanked him. 

“Don’t mention it, m’boy.” Sirius couldn’t help smiling (it might have been the mead). He hadn’t been m’boy in decades. It made him want to look into the shadows for Regulus.

He pulled out his still-new aspen wand and turned it over in his hands. It hadn’t ceased to be odd to carry a white wand instead of a black one. “Aspen?” asked Slughorn with interest. “That’s a wand for a duelist, I’d say. Not that wandlore was ever my particular speciality, but when you’ve been around as long as I have, you pick up a little bit of everything.”

“Even worse, it has a phoenix feather core,” said Sirius. “The rebirth aspect is a bit unsubtle, isn’t it?”

Slughorn laughed, but his eyes were sad. Sirius flinched inwardly at the memory of how everyone who had seen him in the weeks after his exoneration had been moved to tears. Slughorn’s weeping would be worse than Hagrid’s. Hagrid always wore his emotions on his sleeve anyway. Slughorn, as Andromeda had taken pains to remind Sirius, was more restrained. 

“The oddest thing happened when this wand chose me,” Sirius rushed on, flicking the wand about in his hands. “I’d been using a wand that had been lost at Hogwarts. Hidden. Forgotten. It worked so well for me that I asked Mr. Ollivander whether he remembered it. He did, of course. He told me that it belonged to my brother Regulus. He told me that Regulus bought it when he was eleven and came back without it a few years later. He asked for a different wand. It surprised me, but of course Regulus and I weren’t very close by the end. Do you have any idea why he would have done that? I can’t imagine giving up my first wand voluntarily.”

Slughorn’s eyes stayed misty, but his voice was steady. “I do recall that incident, in fact. Regulus came to me in my office one day and asked for permission to leave school for an afternoon to travel to Diagon Alley. He said his wand had been lost and needed replacing. I scolded him and I pretended to believe him and I let him go.”

“Why didn’t you believe him?”

“Very few wizards are careless enough to lose their wands. Your brother, whatever his flaws may have been, was not careless.”

“He was careless enough to join the Death Eaters and get himself killed when he tried to get back out.”

Slughorn wrinkled his brow. “What gives you that idea?”

“That he joined the Death Eaters? It wasn’t a secret, not even from the disowned family members. Our parents were proud of it. Thought he was a right hero. I imagine that’s the only reason he did it in the first place. Too soft to have his own opinions, so he thought what his parents thought.”

“You’re awfully hard on him. He was a child.”

“We were all children. Children can decide whether they believe it is acceptable to murder and subjugate other human beings based upon the alleged quality of their blood.”

“Have another drink, Sirius.” There was a gently commanding tone to Slughorn’s voice that all longtime professors mastered. He wondered if Moony could talk that way yet.

He took the drink.

He didn’t care if his mind went fuzzy after all.

If he didn’t care, that meant he’d had too much already. The mead was stronger than he’d expected.

Fuck.

“You shouldn’t waste any more of this mead on me,” said Sirius, swirling it in his glass. “I’m about to stop tasting it. Keep the rest for yourself, and serve me something cheap and awful. I won’t know the difference.”

“I haven’t anything cheap and awful,” said Slughorn, and Sirius couldn’t help but laugh.

“Good,” said Slughorn. “Now, as to your brother and the wand. There had been a skirmish between the students. It happened often then, as you know. The world was at war and our students were choosing sides. Regulus was more conflicted than you seem to have given him credit for. How could he not have been, with you as his brother and Andromeda as his cousin? His family was divided. His roommates were divided. His Quidditch team was divided. Don’t look at me like that, Sirius, I made it my business to know. Not everyone in Slytherin House was a blood purist, unless you’d like to accuse Andromeda Tonks, or perhaps me.”

“Fine,” said Sirius eloquently.

“Assuming Regulus knew who disarmed him, he could have retrieved his wand in any number of ways. He could have told a professor what happened. He could have gone to his classmates and asked them to take it back by force. He didn’t do that, because that would have meant declaring his position and officially choosing his side. That was why I let him go to Diagon Alley without any questions. I wanted him to hold off on making a choice for as long as he could, because the longer he held out, the more likely it was that he would question the values he’d been taught by your parents.”

“He had a shrine to Voldemort—” Slughorn nearly dropped his drink, and Sirius begrudgingly corrected himself. “He had a shrine to You-Know-Who in his bedroom at home. He spent years building it up. I saw it last month when I was at Grimmauld Place looking for something for Harry.”

“What else would he have in his room at home? Your room at home probably had decorations calculated to infuriate your parents, am I correct?”

Only the _Gryffindor flags and the Muggle motorcycles and the girls in bikinis._ “Yes.”

“Your instinct was to confront. Your brother’s was to appease. That doesn’t necessarily make him soft or a coward. He was in a difficult situation.”

“We were all—”

“It got worse by orders of magnitude each year.”

“When did it start?” asked Sirius, hoping against hope that he could salvage the conversation after all. “You taught there for—”

“Don’t put a number on it, Mr. Black, or I shall become less pleasant.”

“You’re younger than Dumbledore.”

“Better.”

“When did you notice the tensions escalating? The students needing to pick sides?”

Slughorn sighed. “Around 1960, I’d say. About ten years before the war began in earnest. When did you start school?”

“1971.”

“Yes, that’s about right. Your class came in with the war, and it was your class who ended it.” 

“What was it like before that? Were there always tensions between the houses?”

“Of course. It’s a silly competition that the students, and sometimes the professors, take very seriously. The founders themselves chose the students they liked best. The Heads of Houses always had their wish lists when a new class arrived. When times are good, it’s in good fun. I wanted you; I didn’t get you. It didn’t hurt anything that Minerva ended up with you.”

“According to her, it shaved years off of her life.”

Slughorn laughed deeply and reached for the mead. He filled Sirius’ glass and his own.

“What about when— before Grindelwald was defeated? That must have affected Hogwarts.”

“To a lesser extent than You-Know-Who, but naturally it did. Why are you asking me these things, Sirius?” Even through his half-inebriated haze, Sirius felt the hint of a warning.

“I was trying to figure out what Regulus was thinking,” he lied as contritely as he could. “What students like him thought.”

“You know what students like Regulus thought. You were a student like Regulus.”

“I never needed anyone to give me time to choose my side. I knew my side before I ever started school.”

“Perhaps, but you came to school in search of your future. In search of your place. In search of your family. The students who aren’t certain who their families are, or the students who don’t have families at all, those are the ones who search the hardest. Those are the ones who see the school as their home. Those are the ones who become the most attached to Hogwarts. They’re the ones who look for their family there— whether that’s the Slug Club or a future spouse or a group of friends or the Quidditch team or the Death Eaters.”

It made sense, in a pathetic sort of a way. Regulus had been looking for his place and his family within the Death Eaters.

Uncomfortably, Sirius remembered Harry’s complaint when he’d told him about the protections on Privet Drive: _Hogwarts is the only home I have._

Voldemort, who would have been at school during Grindelwald’s rise and defeat, would have been looking to him as a model and recruiting his first Death Eaters. Voldemort had certainly been attached to Hogwarts in the way Slughorn described. He’d murdered a fellow student and made a Horcrux there. He’d made second Horcrux from one of the school’s prized relics and hidden it there. He’d put a curse on the Defense position. His greatest rival was Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts.

* * *

Before he returned to his cottage in Hogsmeade, Sirius stopped in a shop and bought a copy of _Hogwarts, a History._

* * *

He read _Hogwarts, a History._

It mentioned the diadem of Ravenclaw.

It mentioned the sword of Gryffindor.

It mentioned a golden cup created by Helga Hufflepuff and a locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin. These, the book explained, were privately owned.

* * *

_Dear Professor Moony,_

_I am suddenly interested in the history of the fine institution at which you teach. In particular, I find myself fascinated by the relics of the founders. There is, for example, the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. It is, naturally, lost. But what of the sword of Gryffindor, the golden cup of Hufflepuff, and a locket worn by Salazar Slytherin? I believe the sword of Gryffindor hangs in the Headmaster’s office. Have you ever inspected it closely?_

_Regards,_

_Padfoot_

* * *

_Dear Padfoot,_

_I held the sword of Gryffindor in my hands this morning. I asked the Headmaster if I could inspect it in preparation for a class in which I discussed with students the ways in which cursed objects could be destroyed._

_It seems that the sword chooses who will wield it. The sword at least permitted me to hold it, which I count as a victory. There is nothing about the sword that is like anything you or I have touched before._

_As for the other objects you mention, Professor Binns tells me that they, too, are considered lost. Their last known owner was murdered, supposedly by her own house-elf._

_Kreacher is still in the kitchens here. I checked._

_Regards,_

_Professor Moony._

* * *

_Dear Professor Moony,_

_Thank you. Also, shut up._

_Regards,_

_Padfoot_

* * *

He went back to Grimmauld Place and sat in Regulus’ room and stared at the remnants of the shrine to Voldemort.

He thought about Regulus joining the Death Eaters to please their parents.

He thought about how he might have met (might still meet?) his death at the hands of his cousin and his parents’ house-elf.

He thought about how Andromeda, who had jettisoned her family of origin as soon as it had been practicable, and who had spent most of her life as Andromeda Tonks, still sometimes thought of herself as a Black. ( _There's a necklace that has her name wrapped up with Bellatrix's and Narcissa’s,_ Nymphadora had said. _It must have been one of a set of three originally. Dad hates that she has it, but he doesn't tell her.)_

He thought that he needed to learn about Tom Riddle’s Muggle father.

* * *

He asked Ted to teach him how Muggles did research. Ted, ever affable, agreed. 

Sirius learned that Tom Riddle’s Muggle father had been murdered in Little Hangleton in 1943.

He double-checked the Ministry’s records. A wizard named Morfin, a descendant of Slytherin himself, had confessed to the crime. (Voldemort talked to snakes. Voldemort was a descendant of Slytherin.) 

He went to Little Hangleton. He found the remnants of a shack surrounded by powerful magical protections. 

He nearly burned himself to a crisp disabling them.

He found a ring buried in a golden box.

He decided against telling Remus in writing what he had done. They would discuss it after the next full moon.

In the meantime, he left the ring in a drawer in an unused bedroom, locked there with every spell he knew. 

* * *

Griffith Ellis dutifully owled Sirius to let him know that the monthly meeting of the Flagstone Dueling Club would be next Tuesday, and Griffith (who was currently the club’s president) would be pleased to bring Sirius along as his particular guest.

Sirius accepted gratefully. As he’d expected, he’d met several members of the club in the past. If he’d known Hestia Jones was a member, he wouldn’t have needed Slughorn’s help to get his wand in the door— but then, the whole thing had been Slughorn’s idea.

That night, he fought in four duels and watched two dozen. As he sat beside Hestia and watched the championship (for form’s sake, he rooted for Griffith even if the man was a bit self-important), he noticed that his hands had changed. They had been rough with callouses from the year he had used them as paws. Now they bore only wand callouses. 

Hestia and Griffith both invited him to return the next month. 

One night per month at the dueling club. One night per month at Hogwarts with Moony, followed by breakfast with Harry. Three or four evenings per month with Andromeda and her family. The occasional visit from the Weasley twins with their newest invention.

It was almost nice, if he forgot about the diadem in Moony’s drawer and the ring in his own drawer and the two Horcruxes still completely unaccounted-for.

_**To be continued.** _


	35. Harry and the Merpeople

The start of the term flew by with what Harry considered an excessive amount of homework— they had more than a year left to study for their OWLs!— and far too few extra Defense lessons. All the spells in the world wouldn’t be of any help if Cedric didn’t figure out the meaning behind the screaming eggs the champions had captured during the first task.

Then, on the last Thursday morning before the second task, Cedric called out to Harry with a smile. The sixth-years were entering the transfiguration classroom as the fourth-year Gryffindors vacated it. “Bring your broom tonight,” Cedric said. “And come half an hour early if you can.”

“I can,” said Harry, who usually spent any spare time between dinner and Thursday night Defense lessons losing to Ron at wizard chess and thought that he could survive a week without an ignominious defeat. 

Cedric dropped his voice. “Instead of meeting in the Defense classroom, let’s meet in the prefects’ bathroom. You know where it is? Fourth door to the left of that statue of Boris the Bewildered on the fifth floor. Password’s ‘pine fresh.’ I’ll tell Professor Lupin.”

Harry couldn’t imagine telling a professor, even one as kind and unflappable as Lupin, that he wanted to meet for extra lessons in a bathroom. He decided that it was just as well that he was too young to be the Hogwarts champion.

That evening, Harry hurried the the fifth floor and the statue of Boris the Bewildered. “Pine fresh,” he whispered to the door, which creaked open. 

For a moment, he stood in awe. The bathroom was softly lit by a splendid candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor. About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pool’s edges, each with a differently colored jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board. Long white linen curtains hung at the windows; a large pile of fluffy white towels sat in a corner, and there was a single golden-framed painting on the wall. It featured a blonde mermaid who was fast asleep on a rock.

“I did the same thing when I first saw it,” said Cedric, and Harry jumped at the reminder that he was not alone. “I just stood here and stared.” He grinned, and Harry grinned back. “We’ll need water to practice. Why don’t you fill up the bath?” Cedric offered to let Harry fill the bath as if it were a treat, and Harry soon realized why. Each of the taps carried different sorts of bubble bath mixed with water, though it wasn’t bubble bath as Harry had ever experienced it. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs; another poured ice-white foam so thick that Harry thought it would have supported his weight if he’d cared to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water. Harry amused himself for a while turning the taps on and off, particularly enjoying the effect of one whose jet bounced off the surface of the water in large arcs.

“That’s my favorite, too,” said Cedric. “It moves like a Snitch when it’s first released.”

Harry hadn’t realized that that was why he had liked it so much, but Cedric wasn’t wrong. 

“Why are we here?” he asked. He nodded at the egg Cedric had set beside the water. “That thing’s screaming drove you so mad you decided to take a bath with Lupin and me?”

Cedric laughed. “Almost. I opened it up in the Hufflepuff common room, hoping someone would be able to figure out something.”

“And someone did?”

“They didn’t even get a chance. There’s a portrait of Newt Scamander on the wall— you know, wrote _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ — and it asked me why I would try to talk to merpeople without going underwater.”

“The screaming is _merpeople_?” Harry asked in disbelief. 

“It sounds better when you listen underwater.” Cedric handed the egg to Harry. “You’ll have to put your head in.” 

Harry removed his glasses, drew in a deep breath, and dunked his head into the warm, bubbling water. A chorus of eerie voices sang to him from the open egg.

_“Come seek us where our voices sound,_   
_We cannot sing above the ground,_   
_And while you’re searching, ponder this:_   
_We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss,_   
_An hour long you’ll have to look,_   
_And to recover what we took,_   
_But past an hour— the prospect’s black,_   
_Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back.”_

He sat up and brushed his wet hair out of his eyes.

“So you have an hour to get something from the merpeople in the lake for the second task?”

Cedric nodded proudly. “Should be easy after the dragon. I wanted to practice blocking hexes while I’m underwater. I’ve never done that. You should be able to fly your broom over the bath and try to stun me from above.”

“And if I hit you, you’ll drown!” Harry objected.

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” said a hoarse voice from behind them. Lupin had arrived. “I think you’ve devised an excellent way to spend our last meeting before the second task, Cedric.”

Cedric tossed away his robes; he was wearing a swimming costume underneath them. He jumped into the water while casting a charm that conjured an enormous bubble around his head, making his features look oddly wide and stretched.

Harry made a mental note to get someone to teach him how to do that, just in case. He wasn’t a very good swimmer.

For the next thirty minutes, he flew his broom around the bathroom (which was more than large enough to make flying a great deal of fun) and attacked Cedric as he lurked under the water. The game ended when Harry dove straight at the water and sent a body-bind at Cedric as he reached the nadir of his feint. The spell landed; Lupin ended the incantation and pulled Cedric out of the water as Harry made one last loop of the room on his broom. 

“Nice one. But I don’t think there will be any wizards in the lake trying to body bind me,” said Cedric as he dried himself off with a quick spell. (Harry wanted to learn that spell, too.) 

“Not wizards, but grindylows,” said Harry, remembering Lupin’s lectures about dark creatures the previous year. “You need to be able to break their grip.”

“Right,” said Cedric, looking spooked for the first time that night. “We had Quirrell the year we did dark creatures. He mostly stammered a lot and told us to avoid them.”

“And you need to be able to take back whatever it is,” added Harry, warming to the subject. “If you just need to fight, you won’t have any problem, but if it’s locked up and normal spells don’t work…” He remembered the protections Dumbledore had put around the Philosopher’s Stone. Then he remembered how Sirius had broken into the castle carrying nothing but a knife. And he remembered the knife Sirius had given him short weeks before. 

“My godfather gave me a knife for Christmas,” he told Cedric. “It can unlock any lock and undo any knot. Do you want to borrow it?”

“A real Everything Knife?” Cedric asked, clearly impressed. “You have an Everything Knife?”

Harry looked at Lupin for confirmation; he had only thought of it as Sirius’ knife and hadn’t known whether it was called anything else. Lupin nodded, looking proud, and somehow that made Harry feel embarrassed in a way he hadn’t when he’d been flying his broom in loops around a bubble bath. 

“I’d love to borrow it,” said Cedric. “Thanks. I’ll take good care of it, I promise. Good thinking on that, and the grindylow, too. No wonder Professor Lupin chose you for this.”

Luckily, it was hot and steamy enough in the bathroom that Harry didn’t think anyone would notice if he blushed the tiniest bit.

* * *

Harry told Ron and Hermione about the egg and the merpeople the next day. When he was done, Ron said that perhaps Harry shouldn’t have mentioned Cedric’s plans in front of Hermione lest Hermione repeat them to Viktor Krum. 

For a brief instant, Hermione looked torn between frustration and satisfaction. “We have more important things to worry about,” she told Ron.

“Like what?” asked Ron. “OWLs? Those are more than a year away.”

“It’s never too soon to worry about OWLs, and I’m glad Harry at least wants to learn the bubble-head charm. But that’s not what I meant. During the first task, something weird happened to Harry.”

“Weird things have been happening to Harry since he was a baby. He wouldn’t be Harry if weird things weren’t happening to him.”

“All the same, I don’t think Harry should go off alone on the day of the task this time. I think one of us should always be with him, no matter what.”

Ron shrugged. “We would have gone to watch the task together anyway.” 

Harry wondered whether he should object to being discussed as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He decided not to bother. He rather liked Hermione’s plan; he still didn’t feel as if he knew exactly what had happened when he’d gone off with Zacharias Smith during the first task, and he didn’t like that sensation at all.

* * *

Hermione’s plan, however wise, was not to be. The evening before the second task, Fred and George interrupted Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they worked on their astronomy essay. (How he and Ron came to be doing homework days before it was due was a mystery to Harry.) “McGonagall wants to see you in her office, Harry,” said Fred. “You too, Hermione.”

“Why?” said Hermione, looking surprised.

“Dunno… she was looking a bit grim, though,” said Fred.

“We’re supposed to take you down to her office,” said George.

Harry and Hermione followed Fred and George through the drafty corridors in silence. He suspected that this had something to do with the upcoming task and he suspected that he wasn’t going to like it. He knew Hermione’s thoughts must be running along a similar path.

“You don’t have any idea what you did?” Fred asked when they reached McGonagall’s office.

“No,” said Harry.

“Well, whatever it is, make sure you don’t get yourself suspended from Quidditch next year,” said George, and the twins were gone.

Harry and Hermione exchanged a last troubled look as they entered the office.

“Potter. Granger. Good,” said McGonagall curtly. “We’ll be meeting with the Headmaster in a moment, but I wanted to speak to you in private first.”

“Speak to us about what?” Harry asked. 

“As you well know, the second task of the Triwizard Tournament is tomorrow. As much as you’ve been helping Diggory train, Potter, I expect that you know more than most about it.”

Harry nodded. “He has an hour to take something from the merpeople in the lake.”

“Correct. And that something will be you, Potter.”

“What?” asked Harry.

“No!” said Hermione at the same time. “They can’t use Harry as a hostage against his will. He didn’t agree to be in the tournament. He’s not even of age.”

Harry appreciated Hermione’s concern, but he doubted that McGonagall had asked to see Hermione so Harry could have an advocate before someone tried to drown him for sport. “What about Hermione? Why did you need to see her?”

“Miss Granger is going to be the hostage for Viktor Krum.”

“Just because she went on a date with him once?” Harry objected. “She barely even knows him. Tell Karkaroff to find a hostage from his own school. Some of those other Durmstrang blokes must be Krum’s friends.”

“He’s not very close to any of them,” said Hermione quietly. “It’s hard for him, being so famous, and the others are jealous because of the way Karkaroff favors him.”

“You want to be his hostage?” Harry demanded. He didn’t really care if Hermione wanted to be Viktor Krum’s girlfriend— and he had some sympathy for Krum’s situation, which sounded rather familiar— but he didn’t want Hermione to be put in danger. More selfishly, he didn’t want Hermione to be unable look out for him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been counting on Hermione’s plan not to let him out of her sight.

“Of course not,” said Hermione, wringing her hands. “What happens if we refuse?”

“You are correct that we cannot force you to take part. However, I very strongly advise you to agree. This is an international event, and Miss Granger’s presence as Krum’s friend demonstrates that the students are, in fact, reaching across school lines.”

Harry could see Hermione thinking that over and weighing the pros and cons in her mind. “What about Harry?” she asked. “I know he’s been practicing with Cedric, but Cedric has lots of friends in his own House, and his own year.”

“And what about Cho Chang?” asked Harry with a sickening feeling in his stomach. Part of him felt like he ought to accept the danger himself instead of letting it fall on Cho. The rest of him thought that Cho would be in much less danger than he would. “If Hermione is going to be Krum’s hostage because they went to the Yule Ball together, shouldn’t Cho be the hostage for Cedric?”

“That was the original plan,” said McGonagall, and her lips grew even thinner. “Miss Chang had an accident on one of the moving staircases today. Broke her leg and hit her head. Madam Pomfrey absolutely would not let her out of the hospital wing this evening, and I quite agree.”

“She’ll be all right, though?” asked Harry, feeling slightly guilty.

“Yes, she will be fine. As will the two of you.”

“Who chose Harry as the substitute?” asked Hermione, not even bothering to hide her suspicion. “And who chose me? Was it Karkaroff?”

“Yes, Headmaster Karkaroff chose you. The headmasters choose the prizes for their own champions.”

“So why did Dumbledore choose me?” asked Harry. 

“It was suggested by Ludo Bagman,” said McGonagall, and Harry thought he heard the tiniest hint of disdain in her voice. “He seemed to think it would liven up the tournament to have you involved. Headmaster Karkaroff agreed so enthusiastically that Professor Dumbledore decided it would do no harm.”

“We get left there to die if Cedric and Krum can’t make it to us in time!” Harry objected. _“Past an hour, prospect’s black, too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back.”_

McGonagall gave him a wry look. “The instructions weren’t meant to be taken literally, Potter. If Diggory is unable to reach you, the merpeople will return you to the surface once the task is over.”

“How will we be able to breathe for an hour?” Hermione wanted to know.

“Professor Dumbledore will put you in an enchanted sleep.” 

Hermione met Harry’s eyes. She still looked troubled. “Professor Dumbledore wouldn’t let us get hurt,” she offered.

“No, he would not,” McGonagall concurred briskly. “If you will accompany me to his office.”

Harry’s mind spun with plans as they approached Dumbledore’s spiral staircase. Should he grab Hermione and run? If they could get to the Marauder’s Map and the invisibility cloak in time, they could surely hide until the task was over. Should he demand to see Sirius? Could he ask for Lupin? Lupin had warned him repeatedly about Karkaroff— did Lupin know about this, that it had been Karkaroff’s idea to use Harry as a hostage when Cedric had so many other, better friends? Could they get a message to Ron? There was surely no chance that they could fight their way out of the office once they stepped inside…

In the end, Harry didn’t put any of his plans in action. Hermione didn’t want to object, and Harry did trust Dumbledore, mostly… But Dumbledore didn’t tell anyone everything, Dumbledore had told him so much less about his own past than Sirius had…

“I want to see Sirius,” Harry demanded just before they reached the door. “I won’t do this unless my godfather says it’s all right.”

“Your godfather did say it was all right,” said McGonagall, sounding surprised. “We contacted him for permission. He thought that you would think it was an adventure, and he knows how much time you’ve spent training with Diggory.”

Harry wondered for a wild moment whether McGonagall was lying.

“He’ll be at the task tomorrow,” McGonagall added. 

That was slightly more reassuring, but Harry still thought that Cho happening to fall off a moving staircase after successfully navigating them for five years was too much of a coincidence.

Dumbledore’s office door swung open to reveal Dumbledore, Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, Ludo Bagman, Percy Weasley, and a small blonde girl who could only have been Fleur’s younger sister. She was chattering to Madame Maxime in French, and without understanding a word Harry got the impression that she didn’t like being chosen as a hostage any more than Harry and Hermione did. He heard her say Fleur’s name over and over, as well as another name that sounded like _Marianne_.

Bagman shook Harry’s hand enthusiastically; Percy shook his hand rather pompously. Karkaroff and Maxime nodded to him, and then Dumbledore explained what was going to happen in both English and French. 

Just before Dumbledore cast the spell, Hermione took Harry’s hand, and Fleur’s sister looked so forlorn that Harry took her hand, too. Her look of rapturous gratitude was the last thing he saw before the spell took hold. 

* * *

Then Harry was underwater and he had cast a bubble-head charm (how did he even known how to do that?) and he was struggling with Cedric. No, he was struggling against Cedric, he was fighting Cedric off, Cedric was the enemy, he wanted Cedric to drown…

He wanted Cedric to win. He relaxed and let Cedric pull him up and out of the water. 

He felt his head break the surface of the lake; wonderful, cold, clear air was making his wet face sting; he gulped it down, feeling as though he had never breathed properly before. Beside him, Cedric was shaking with exhilaration. 

The crowd in the stands was making a great deal of noise, shouting and screaming. They all seemed to be on their feet. Sirius and Ron had made it to the edge of the lake, along with Madame Pomfrey and Cedric’s father. Harry had met Cedric’s father once before, at the World Cup, and he didn’t feel a need to renew the acquaintance. He waded straight toward Sirius instead, only half-listening to Amos Diggory’s bellowed exultations that Cedric had made it back in well under the allotted hour and had bested his competitors by a significant margin.

“The others aren’t back yet?” Harry asked Sirius and Ron nervously. “Hermione?” 

“No,” said Ron. “And how did Hermione end up as Krum’s hostage anyway? After one date?”

Harry didn’t think that this was a good time to tell Ron that it seemed that Hermione had been on more than one date with Krum, and that she wouldn’t object to more. “It was Karkaroff’s choice,” he said darkly. “And you can bet Karkaroff was happy to have me used as a substitute once Cho Chang got hurt.” He glanced around, looking for prying ears, but everyone’s attention was still on Cedric. “Do you think Karkaroff could have pushed Cho off that staircase himself so he could have a go at drowning me?”

Before Sirius or Ron could answer, Madame Pomfrey was ushering Harry and Cedric toward the hospital tent. Cedric asked his father to keep an eye on the competition, and Harry told Ron to wait for Hermione, but Sirius accompanied them to the tent. 

“Check Harry first,” Cedric told Madame Pomfrey. “I don’t think he came out of the enchanted sleep the way he was meant to. He fought me while we were still underwater, and cast a bubble-head charm on himself before he woke up.” He looked at Harry curiously. “When did you even learn that charm? Flitwick doesn’t teach it until sixth year, after the OWLs. I just learned it.”

Harry didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know how he had done it. He’d wanted to learn, he’d intended to learn, he’d even considered asking Cedric to teach him during one of their training sessions, but he hadn’t actually looked up the incantation, let alone tried to cast the charm. 

Cedric and Sirius were both looking at him, waiting for an answer. “I didn’t know I could cast it,” said Harry. “I wanted to learn after I saw you do it when we were practicing, but I didn’t— I don’t remember casting it. I definitely did? You didn’t do it for me?”

“No,” said Cedric. “There was a crown on your head when I cut you loose— the three of you were tied to a statue at the bottom of a lake, there’s kind of a merperson town square in the mervillage— and you knocked it off when you cast the charm.” Cedric produced Sirius’ knife and handed it to Harry with a grin. “Good thinking loaning this to me. It was dead useful to get you loose as fast as I did.”

Outside; there was a roar from the crowd, and Ludo Bagman’s amplified voice announce that Viktor Krum had returned ten minutes beyond the allotted time. Hermione was safe, then. Harry relaxed a bit more. 

“A crown?” said Sirius to Cedric. “There was a crown on his head?”

Cedric nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

“Did they all have crowns?”

“I don’t think so. But the others had long hair floating everywhere, and that could have knocked the crowns away.”

“What did it look like?”

“I don’t know. I only saw it for a few seconds, it was dark, I was trying to get him loose and then he panicked and started fighting me— are you sure you feel all right, Harry?”

“Fine,” said Harry numbly. Sirius clapped him on the shoulder. “They’ll be sending Hermione and Krum in. I want to ask Dumbledore if he knows about the crown.”

Indeed, Hermione rushed into the tent with Ron at her heels before Sirius was even out of sight. She hugged Harry hard; Krum, Harry noticed, looked a bit annoyed. Krum also looked rather the worse for wear. He seemed to have tried to transfigure himself into a shark and done an incomplete job of it.

“When did you wake up?” Harry asked Hermione once he’d ascertained that she was unhurt. 

“As soon as Viktor pulled my head out of the water,” said Hermione. “It was just like Dumbledore said it would be. It wasn’t like that for you?”

Harry shook his head. He couldn’t repeat his suspicions where Krum could hear and report back to Karkaroff. He handed Hermione a towel so she could wring the water out of her frizzy hair. “Let’s hurry up. Maybe we can get outside in time to see Fleur.”

“She’s way beyond the time limit,” said Ron. “She’s out of the competition after this.”

The crowd yelled again and they hurried outside to see what had happened. 

Fleur was hysterical. Her robes were torn and her face was bleeding from more cuts than Harry could count. Madame Maxime was trying to restrain her as she fought tooth and nail to return to the water. “Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Is she alive? It was the grindylows— Gabrielle!” Madame Maxime said something in French that Harry assumed was meant to reassure Fleur, but it did not have its intended effect. He didn’t blame Fleur at all for her reaction; he thought that he would probably have responded the same way. 

The crowd gasped as several merpeople emerged from lake carrying the little girl— Gabrielle, Harry supposed. She opened her eyes and blinked confusedly in the sunlight. This time, Madame Maxime let Fleur go, and Fleur ran to embrace Gabrielle, sobbing brokenly.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore crouched at the water’s edge and immediately feel deep into conversation with what seemed to be the chief merperson, a particularly wild and ferocious-looking female. He was making the same sort of screechy noises that merpeople made when they were above water; clearly, Dumbledore could speak Mermish. Finally, he straightened up, turned to his fellow judges, and said, “A conference before we give the marks, I think.”

After a few moments, Ludo Bagman made the announcement. Cedric, of course, received the full fifty points, and Krum received a few less. Cedric and Krum were now tied for the lead in the competition. Fleur received only twenty-five points; she insisted that she deserved zero, and continued to hug Gabrielle. Harry thought that Fleur might have left the competition at that moment if leaving had been permitted. 

Krum, for his part, continued to look annoyed as Hermione drifted to her usual position beside Ron and Harry rather than standing at Krum’s side. 

Cedric, meanwhile, was discussing something quite seriously with Dumbledore and Sirius. Harry guessed that he knew exactly what they were talking about and he didn’t want to hear about it second-hand, later, even if Sirius was good about telling him the truth. He made his way over to the trio. Cedric smiled right away, and Sirius draped his arm around Harry’s shoulders. Dumbledore gravely assessed Harry.

“Mr. Diggory tells me that you revived at least partially before you reached the surface of the water,” said Dumbledore. “Is that correct?”

“I think so, Sir,” said Harry. It already seemed so long ago. 

“What do you remember?”

He remembered the thought all too clearly: Cedric was the enemy. He wanted Cedric to drown.

He certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud. He’d spent the whole of second year being accused of wanting to murder his classmates, and it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat.

“I knew that I’d cast a bubble-head charm on myself,” he said slowly. “I don’t remember casting it, I just remember knowing I’d done it even though I didn’t know how. I was pushing Cedric off of me, and then all of a sudden I remembered that I wanted Cedric to win and that I had to let him swim us out of there.”

“You’ve never studied bubble-head charms? I believe that those are on Professor Flitwick’s curriculum for sixth years, but this wouldn’t be the first time you dabbled in advanced magic, Mr. Potter.” 

“I wanted to,” Harry admitted. “I saw Cedric practicing and I thought maybe he’d teach me, that it would be a good thing to know, but I didn’t try it.”

“Try it now.”

Harry remembered the incantation and the wand movement Cedric had used in the prefects’ bathroom. The bubble appeared around his head. Dumbledore nodded and flicked his wand. The bubble around Harry’s head vanished with a pop.

“How did you know the incantation?” Dumbledore asked calmly.

“I heard Cedric say it.”

Dumbledore smiled. “Sometimes one picks things up rather quickly. Professor McGonagall informed me that you were not entirely pleased with your role in today’s festivities. She said that you were rather concerned that something might go wrong.”

“All three of us were,” Harry said before realizing what a grave insult it was to imply that they had agreed that Dumbledore might have let them die at the bottom of the lake.

Dumbledore didn’t seem to be insulted, however. “Yes, I imagine it was a rather unexpected and unnerving request. Tell me, Harry, how well can you swim?”

“Not very well,” Harry admitted.

“You had lessons?”

“My cousin did. I… watched.”

Dumbledore’s eyes flickered. “You learned to swim only by observing, just as you learned the bubble-head charm?”

It sounded awfully reasonable when Dumbledore put it that way. “I guess,” said Harry.

“I believe that you may have performed unintentional magic triggered by your rather strong concerns that you were not safe. Your reaction to Mr. Diggory is not uncommon amongst those who drown, as you may know. Drowning victims sometimes pull their would-be saviors down with them when they struggle.”

Harry had heard that said before. “We’ll get you proper swimming lessons this summer,” Sirius whispered in Harry’s ear. Harry ignored the suggestion. The mental image of himself in a class with a group of six-year-olds was humiliating. 

“You could practice in the lake by Ottery St. Catchpole next time you’re visiting the Weasleys,” Cedric offered. “That’s where my dad taught me.” Harry supposed that that sounded less horrible than Sirius’ suggestion. Ron and the twins would probably enjoy spending a few afternoons at the lake.

“As for the crown Mr. Diggory saw on Mr. Potter’s head,” Dumbledore continued. “Mr. Diggory are you absolutely certain that that was what you saw?”

Cedric looked less confident than Harry had ever seen him before. “It was awfully dark, and I was worried about getting out of there in time, and there were grindylows and merpeople everywhere,” said Cedric. “I’m not certain of anything that happened after Ludo Bagman blew the whistle.”

“Understandable,” said Dumbledore. “The Merchiefteness informed me that the hostages were never out of her sight and that she did not see a crown. The light and the stressful nature of the situation may have played tricks with Mr. Diggory’s eyes.”

“I’m sure that was it,” said Cedric, and he did sound sure. 

But after Cedric excused himself to visit Cho in the hospital wing, Harry caught Hermione’s eye and he knew that she, like he, was not convinced.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: There are multiple passages quoted directly from The Goblet of Fire in this chapter, including the description of the prefects’ bathroom; the merpeoples’ song; the dialog when Fred and George come to collect the hostages; and Harry’s reaction to leaving the lake.


	36. The Conversation

Sirius appeared out of nowhere— that was one of his many talents— and grabbed Remus by the arm. 

“Have you looked at the thing in your drawer today?” he asked without preamble.

“I look at it most days,” said Remus nonchalantly as he scanned the crowd around them for signs of students listening too closely. When they’d been at school, James and Sirius would have come up with a thousand wild theories about what “thing” a professor might keep in his drawer and wouldn’t have stopped until they’d unravelled the mystery. From what Remus knew, Harry and his friends behaved in much the same way.

“But today?” continued Sirius.

“Yes, today. Do you want to come up and look?”

“Yes,” said Sirius, and they detached themselves from the throng heading to the Great Hall to eat a dozen kinds of dessert and retell the events of the second task over and over again. Behind them, the waves of gossip rose and fell. _Would Fleur Delacour drop out of the tournament? What would happen then? How serious was Viktor Krum’s relationship with Hermione Granger? Could all of Hogwarts admit now that Cedric Diggory was just plain unbeatable?_

Inside Remus’ office, Sirius jerked the drawer open and looked at the diadem for a long moment.

“Diggory said he thought he saw a crown on Harry’s head right before Harry broke an enchantment he shouldn’t have been able to break and cast a spell he shouldn’t have been able to cast,” he said. “For a minute I was convinced that we’d lost this thing and Karkaroff was using it against us. Against Harry.”

Remus came over and stared at the diadem too. “Technically it was Ludo Bagman who wanted Harry used as Cedric’s hostage,” said Remus. “But from what I understand, Karkaroff loved the idea.”

“Coward is more the type to hope Harry would get strangled by a grindylow than to take action himself,” said Sirius, slamming the door shut. “I didn’t think he’d try anything in front of so many people. That’s why I gave permission for Harry to take part.”

“And Harry is very good at breaking enchantments and casting spells when his back is to the wall,” Remus mused. “He learns everything in my class twice as fast as the other students, and Filius is more than pleased with his work in Charms.” Remus caught Sirius’ eye and grinned. “And Minerva says he’s gone from averaging Acceptable to between Exceeds Expectations and Outstanding in Transfiguration, which she attributes to his having an unusually calm year. I attribute it to studying with his godfather.”

Remus very much enjoyed watching Sirius look pleased and then pretend not to look pleased.

“I found another one,” said Sirius, obviously keen to change the subject. “I didn’t want to tell you until I could do it in person. I went to the house where his father’s family lived, the shack where his mother’s family lived. It was buried there. A ring. If I had to guess, I’d say it belonged to Salazar Slytherin.”

“Where is it?” 

“Drawer in my house. We need to stop keeping these things in drawers and start destroying them.” Abruptly, Sirius flicked his wand at Remus’ teakettle and gestured that they should sit down as it whistled. “I had half a mind to go to Dumbledore,” he continued. “We’re amateurs at this. He knows more about Voldemort, and more about Horcruxes, than we’re going to learn in the next few months before Harry gets sent back to his relatives.”

“You had half a mind? You don’t anymore?”

“I know I agreed to letting Harry act as Diggory’s hostage, but I don’t like that Dumbledore agreed to it. Just use whatever girl Diggory dragged to the Yule Ball and leave it at that. He took the girl Harry had a crush on, right?”

“Cho Chang.” Remus felt sickened as he thought about what might have happened to Harry in the water. “She was the original choice. She had a freak accident and Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t let her take part.”

“Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

“No.”

“Do you think we should go to Dumbledore?”

“No.”

“Mind giving me more than a one-word answer?”

Remus sighed, and was grateful for the tea that was suddenly in his hands. “Do you remember when I first told you about the… the things I know that I shouldn’t know?” Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say the words _time travel._ Even after a year and a half, it all seemed too ridiculous. 

“I’m sorry about hexing you in the back,” said Sirius, and Remus laughed.

“Not then. After. When I told you that I would tell you everything but two things.”

“Who you married, and who killed Dumbledore,” said Sirius. “I know the first. Is it time to tell me the second?”

“I think it must be,” said Remus slowly. Sirius wasn’t the half-crazed Azkaban escapee he had been when Remus had first told him his story. Sirius was calm and measured and downright thoughtful about his plans. He’d had dementors almost eradicated from Azkaban. He’d safely extracted a Horcrux on his own. He’d delicately balanced the need to preserve Lily’s blood protection with Harry’s need to know the truth.

He probably wasn’t going to shout from the highest tower of the castle that Severus Snape was a Death Eater and Dumbledore was an old fool for trusting him.

“Well?” prompted Sirius.

“At the end of Harry’s sixth year, Draco Malfoy—”

“I know about the battle, I know about the vanishing cabinet that no longer exists thanks to me, I know about Fenrir Greyback maiming Bill Weasley, and I know Harry watched Dumbledore die. The only thing you didn’t tell me was who,” Sirius interrupted impatiently. “Was it my monstrous little cousin Draco?”

“No, despite his best efforts, which were very poor indeed.”

“Then who?”

“Severus Snape.”

For a fraction of a second, Sirius was speechless. “Slimy little Snivellus ran around with that crowd, but he was never even accused of being a Death Eater,” he gaped.

“I can only assume that that’s because Dumbledore covered for him.”

“Why in the name of Merlin’s saggy left nut would Dumbledore do that?”

“I always thought he had a reason to trust him. A reason to believe that Snape was on his side, on our side, on Harry’s side.” He remembered anew, with a rush of self-loathing, how certain he’d been that Dumbledore had had his reasons. How he’d insisted to Harry that Dumbledore had had his reasons. “I was never arrogant enough to ask, not that Dumbledore would have told me. But it seems that he told Harry, and after he was dead, Harry told me.” Remus drew in a shaky breath and braced himself for the explosion, wand positioned just so. “That prophecy. Snape was the one who knew about it and went to Voldemort. Snape was the one who sent Voldemort after Lily and James.”

Sirius jumped to his feet and lunged for the door. Remus locked the door and froze Sirius in place with one flick of his wand.

He walked around Sirius so that he could face the gray-eyed glower. Sirius looked more than willing to rip him limb from limb to get to Snape.

Remus didn’t blame him. James and Sirius had been so close, and Sirius had been destroyed by James’ death…

Sirius was never going to forgive Remus for not taking revenge on Snape and for not telling Sirius sooner that Snape was as responsible as anyone— as responsible as Peter— for Voldemort’s attack on the Potters. 

It didn’t matter what Remus and Sirius had gone through together in this timeline or in the other one that only Remus remembered. James, not Remus, had been the best friend Sirius had ever had. Sirius would never forgive Remus for hiding what he knew about Snape— or for failing to avenge James.

But he couldn’t let the fear of losing Sirius (and Harry, Sirius would take Harry, and oh God what if Sirius took Dora too…) stop him from doing what needed to be done. They’d bested Voldemort in the future-past, but they’d done so at an enormous cost. How many had died at the final battle alone? Fifty? Many of them children? 

Ted, dead on the run for committing the crime of being Muggle-born. Mad-Eye, hexed in the face. Dumbledore thrown off the tower, and Sirius falling through the curtain, and Cedric Diggory (who was the kindest, most respectful young man), the death that had started it all…

“I suppose it’s my turn to apologize for hexing you in the back,” said Remus with a calm he didn’t feel. “But I can’t let you do any of the things you’re thinking of doing.”

Sirius didn’t need words to tell Remus that he couldn’t stop him. The glowering sneer said it all.

“No, I can’t stop you forever,” said Remus, making certain that his tones were polite and measured over the pounding of his heart. “But I’m going to keep you here until you’ve heard me out. You do recall that the last time you went running after one of the people who handed Lily and James to Voldemort, you wound up in Azkaban. If you murder Severus Snape, you’ll go right back there.”

Sirius glared harder. Remus wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

“You will get caught, Sirius, don’t tell me that you won’t. We are in a heavily protected castle. Dumbledore, for whatever reason, loves Severus. You will never get within shouting distance of Harry again if Dumbledore so much as suspects that you attacked him.”

Sirius’ eyes flickered, and Remus took that as a his cue to hit Sirius with a second bind. 

“Even if all you do is scream at him or hurt him, you’ve tipped our hand. We need to get rid of those Horcruxes, and we don’t need Severus nosing around while we do it. Never mind that if you aggravate Severus, he’ll feel justified in taking it out on Harry. But Harry isn’t physically unsafe, you see, so Dumbledore won’t do anything to stop it. You had a laugh when you saw that memory of me teaching last year when Neville Longbottom’s boggart turned into Severus. Did you think about what it means? About how horrible he is to students he doesn’t like? Neville knows that the Lestranges tortured his parents into insanity. But are they what he fears the most? No. He’s afraid of Severus, because Severus makes a point of mocking and humiliating and punishing students who have the most distant connection to someone he didn’t like when he was a child.”

The sneer relaxed into Sirius’ patented you-are-so-stupid-that-I-won’t-bother-with-you expression.

“I agree,” said Remus. “It would be better if we could remove him from the school entirely. But he’s not an immediate danger the way Peter Pettigrew and Barty Crouch were, and that means he’s not our priority. We have hundreds of innocent lives to save. You told me once that I belittled Harry’s sacrifice when I gave in to the impulse to live again. Don’t belittle the lives we can save now by rushing in when there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest that he was ever a Death Eater.”

Sirius’ expression softened the slightest bit. He was listening.

“I know it’s horrible,” said Remus. “Knowing, and not doing anything. Every so often, I look at George Weasley and I can feel his blood all over my body. He and I were on a broom together— George was disguised as Harry, you saw bits of this in the Pensieve— and Severus cut off George’s ear. It was a miracle George even survived, but he had a black hole in the side of his head for the rest of his life, however long that may have been. Every time I think of it, I want to murder Severus all over again. But I don’t, because I want to save you and Cedric and Mad-Eye and Ted, and I want to see Teddy again…”

His throat threatened to close up, and he knew he’d said almost everything that he could possibly say.

“I kept it from you for as long as I could because I didn’t want you to have to carry that knowledge around. You had enough on your mind. I always knew I’d tell you. I didn’t trust you when we were children and I could have told you that I was a werewolf, but I didn’t, and I wasted a lot of time and energy that way. I could have trusted that you wouldn’t betray James when were adults, but I didn’t, and I’m not entirely sure how you forgave me for that. I won’t make the same mistake three times. I’ve trusted you with everything I know, now, and I didn’t have to tell you. I just hope you’ll decide not to do anything rash that takes you away from Harry again.”

He flicked his wand and released Sirius. Sirius stalked around him and began to pace the length of the room. 

“Why did knowing that Snape handed Lily and James to Voldemort make Dumbledore trust him?” Sirius asked.

“I don’t know. All Harry said was that Severus told Dumbledore that he was sorry. I don’t think Harry found it a very convincing story, either. All I can assume is that Dumbledore gave a lot of weight to Severus confessing and was tantalized by the prospect of having a spy so close to Voldemort.”

Sirius swore.

Sirius called Dumbledore all sorts of names, some of them impressively creative. 

Sirius reminded Remus at length that Dumbledore had given evidence to the Wizengamot that had led to Sirius’ torturous imprisonment, and that that evidence had turned out to be inaccurate.

Sirius raged against every indignity Harry had ever suffered at the hands of his Muggle relatives and laid all of them at Dumbledore’s feet.

Sirius proposed taking Harry and fleeing the wizarding world (Remus understood the appeal); fleeing the country (Remus understood the appeal of that, too); and fleeing the planet (Remus was reasonably certain that Sirius was joking.)

Sirius listed the various ways in which he would like to murder Severus.

“How can you bring yourself to drink that Wolfsbane Potion he makes you?” Sirius asked, interrupting his own tirade. “I know how much it helps, and at Christmas I almost said something nice about Snape. But he could poison you at any time, Moony!”

“He didn’t last time,” said Remus.

“You weren’t here for two years last time.”

“He won’t do anything until Voldemort rises again. He doesn’t see me as a threat.”

“You broke the curse on the Defense position and you brought me back to the land of the living. He sees you as a a threat. Just like Karkaroff— he’s afraid we have a list of former Death Eaters we’d like to see put away, right?”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Remus sighed. “But I won’t leave Hogwarts until I have to, and Dumbledore won’t keep me here unless Severus makes that potion.”

“Let someone else make it.”

“Who else do you know who is remotely capable of—”

“Horace Slughorn.”

“You mean, one of the few professors who didn’t know about my condition when I was a student? Not that it would have mattered. Seven years and he never learned my name.”

“You liked to be invisible. You would have gone to class under James’ cloak and never had any of the professors learn your name if you could have managed it.”

Remus shrugged. There was some truth to that.

“I don’t know whether I would have found the ring Horcrux without talking to him,” Sirius continued. “And he gave me an introduction to a dueling club. I wouldn’t have thought of it, but it was a great idea.”

“I’m glad,” said Remus, and he meant it. There was no denying that Slughorn had always come through for his favorites. Slughorn, too, was on the list of powerful wizards who hadn’t tried to stay neutral when the Ministry had fallen. Voldemort would have had Slughorn, but Slughorn wouldn’t have Voldemort.

“Why do you do you dislike him?” asked Sirius.

“I don’t dislike him. I dislike his pedagogy.”

Sirius burst into peals of laughter. He laughed so hard that he stopped pacing. He laughed so hard that his body shook and tears rolled down his cheeks. He laughed so hard that Remus wondered whether he had inadvertently forced Sirius into the same kind of mental break he’d had when Peter had blown up the street in 1981. He started to reach for Sirius, but then drew his hand back. He didn’t know how Sirius would react or what Sirius needed.

Finally, Sirius let himself drop bonelessly to the floor at Remus’ feet. He settled himself into a cross-legged position and gazed up at Remus with ersatz rapture. “By all means, Professor Moony,” he said with a stronger voice than Remus would have expected. “Please enlighten me as to your problems with Professor Slughorn’s pedagogy. If you think a layperson could possibly understand, that is.”

Sirius’ mockery hurt a little, but at least Sirius wasn’t off murdering Snape or telling Dumbledore about the Horcruxes. 

“He gave the most help to the students who needed it the least,” said Remus quietly. “If you were one of the smartest— or the richest, or the most connected— he was a wonderful professor who would make certain that you had every chance to succeed in life. If you were one of the rest, he wasn’t going to bother with you. He made certain that you knew that your professor didn’t believe that you were capable of learning and growing. He showed you your place: you weren’t going to be invited to the Slug Club. You weren’t even worthy of the basic respect of being called by your proper name.”

“You’re upset about not being invited to the Slug Club twenty years ago?”

“Of course not. I always thought the Slug Club sounded like hell on Earth, and if I’d ever wanted to go, I had rich and brilliant and well-connected friends who would have taken me as a guest. What he did didn’t bother me at the time. It bothers me now when I have a classroom of children in front of me all day. I can’t imagine damning any of them with my indifference. Should I spend all of the fourth-year Gryffindor class fawning over Harry and demonstrating to Neville Longbottom that I’ve written him off at the age of fourteen? Or would it be better if I tried to teach them both, and find a way for each of them to push his own limits? I don’t want to hold the rest of the class back for a student who can’t keep up, and I certainly don’t think the more gifted students should spend their school years bored out of their minds because their classmates are struggling, but the lesser students at least deserve a modicum of attention while their supposed betters are being invited to parties. I don’t like the way Severus treats Neville, but I don’t like the way Professor Slughorn would have treated him, either.”

He could see that Sirius— Sirius, who had always been the best at everything he tried— didn’t grasp what he was saying. 

“Is the Longbottom boy that much of a lost cause?” asked Sirius after a moment.

“He’s fourteen. There’s no such thing as being a lost cause when you’re fourteen. Children grow up in their own time, and Neville has had a rougher journey than most.”

“What happened to that little girl you were so concerned about?”

 _Simona_. “She left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. I do understand that no school is right for every student. I only think that professors have a moral obligation to attempt to make it right for every student.”

“Okay,” said Sirius, obviously bored with the conversation. “We need to worry about Dumbledore and Snape, not old Sluggy.”

Even the nickname rubbed Remus the wrong way, but Sirius was right. “I don’t know that we need to worry about Dumbledore. He wants what we want— Voldemort banished forever, and Harry as protected and happy as possible in the meanwhile. We can’t trust him with the Horcruxes because we can’t trust him not to trust Severus.”

“We can’t trust him because he’s a manipulative old bastard who thinks he’s entitled to play God with everyone else’s life since he’s so much smarter and more powerful than us ordinary mortals.”

“He’s a good man who makes mistakes, and both of us owe a great deal to him.”

Sirius snorted. “Tell me, please, what precisely I owe to him?”

“He let you stay in school after you decided to feed Severus Snape to a werewolf.”

The air around them thickened. Remus and Sirius talked about all manner of things, but they never talked about _that_.

“If Dumbledore expelled every child who played a prank on a classmate, you wouldn’t have anyone left to teach, Professor,” said Sirius. “And let us not forget that it was well within Snape’s control to refuse to go down the the willow. He knew it was against the rules to touch the willow. He knew it was guarding something dangerous. He knew I despised him. I gave him some information. I didn’t truss him up and lay him at the wolf’s feet. He went of his own volition because that was how desperately he wanted to see my very dear friend deprived of his education and ostracized for the great crime of being _sick_.”

There were not enough hours in the day to try to explain to Sirius that his actions that night had been far, far worse than a “prank.” Sirius had had nineteen years to reconsider, and he had chosen not to.

“Dumbledore also listened to you when you brought Peter to him last spring,” Remus said quietly. “If he was as manipulative as you say, he could have wiped the children’s memories, let Peter run free, and thrown you to the dementors. He wouldn’t have had to deal with the possibility that your claims on Harry would interfere with the spells binding him to Lily’s sister.”

“He can be a manipulative bastard without going that far.”

“And that would make him an imperfect man trying to win what by all rights should be an unwinnable war. Dumbledore is the man who let me into school when no other headmaster would have done it.”

“Because that way he’d have your undying gratitude so he could use you however he wished without your ever questioning it or put your own self-interest first.”

“He forgave me for not telling him that you were an Animagus when you were the most wanted criminal in the world.”

“Are you sure?”

“He chooses to be headmaster of a school when he could have been Minister of Magic a thousand times over.”

“Who wants to be Minister of Magic? Just looking at the front hall of the Ministry makes me want to be sick.”

“He defeated Gellert Grindelwald even though he was in love with him.”

“You can’t tell me that you believe that old rumor!”

“In point of fact, I do,” said Remus. “But even if there was nothing romantic between them, they were certainly very close friends. Lily even mentions it in that letter to you that you found before Christmas.”

“Lily mentioned that Bathilda Bagshot, who was ancient and probably senile, said they were friends. That proves nothing.”

“There was a book written after Dumbledore’s death. It presented a great deal of evidence that—”

“A book written by whom?”

Remus knew he’d lost this argument. “Rita Skeeter.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Let me see if I’ve kept up. According to you, Slughorn is bad because he supported his talented students, the man who left Harry with abusive relatives for ten years is good because he was secretly in love with a dark wizard, and we should all believe what Rita Skeeter says.”

“You wouldn’t willfully misstate what I said if you didn’t think I might be right.”

“I don’t care if you’re right. I care about finding those Horcruxes, getting rid of Voldemort, and getting Harry into a proper home where he can make his own decisions about his future.”

“I want all of those things too.”

“You’d better,” said Sirius, and he left.

_**To be continued.** _


	37. Sirius, Processing

Sirius knew that he ought to be delighted when Fred and George arrived at his cottage in Hogsmeade, grinning their identical grins and weighed down with bags of products that they no longer had space to store in their dormitory. They announced with great fanfare that Harry had said they could borrow his gold cauldron. 

Sirius had already known that (Harry had used the mirror to warn him that the twins would be visiting), but he ought to have appreciated the flare with which the message was delivered.

“We may need a potion to go along with our patented daydream charm,” Fred explained as George inspected the cauldron. “It’s the first in our WonderWitch line.”

“Daydream charm?” asked Sirius. Most of the twins’ products, while amusing, were merely new spins on old Zonko’s jokes. A daydream charm sounded unique.

Fred nodded. “Thirty minutes in the highly realistic daydream of your choice. It’s undetectable unless you start drooling.”

“I don’t think a gold cauldron’s going to fix the drooling, though,” said George, running his finger around the rim of the cauldron with obvious admiration. “Might improve the quality of the daydream, but that’s never been our problem.”

“You’ve tested these on yourselves?”

The twins chorused that they had. “Much more fun testing these than the Skiving Snackbox,” Fred added. He caught Sirius’ eye mischievously. “Want a go?”

Sirius had spent the better part of a year refusing anything that magically altered his mind. He refused dreamless sleep potion even when the benefits were obvious. He rarely transformed into a dog. He had spent twelve years ceding parts of his mind to the dementors and he was loathe to do anything of the kind ever again.

But that had been before.

“Yes,” said Sirius. “I’m your backer. I want to try it.”

The twins looked surprised. “They’re aimed at fifteen-year-old witches, mostly,” said Fred. “Loads of swooning into big, strong, handsome arms.”

Sirius politely decided not to tell the twins to make one for Dumbledore that would allow him to swoon into Grindelwald’s big, strong, handsome arms while they plotted to protect men who thought babies ought to be murdered. Since Dumbledore apparently enjoyed that kind of thing.

“Of course, Angelina tested one and said that what a witch really wants is to throw bludgers at wizards,” said George.

“She was quite rude about it, too,” said Fred.

“But who were we to pass up a business opportunity?” asked George.

“So we do have a Quidditch daydream that’s quite good in our opinion.”

“And Angelina’s.” George rummaged through one of the bags and delightedly produced a pink-and-purple box emblazoned with a turquoise W. The words Quidditch Quest glittered across the top in curling letters.

“Should I try this now, or should I wait until you’re out of my house?”

“Your choice, mate,” said Fred. “If you’re going to do it now, though, you wouldn’t notice if we practiced a few things here?”

“Use the bedroom where you’ve been storing your inventory. Put out any fires you set,” Sirius ordered.

The twins chorused their thank yous and left Sirius turning the box over in his hands.

At last, he settled down near the fire in the very spot where he and Harry had played games all through Christmas Eve.

“Enough,” he told himself, and opened the box.

He was safe in front of the fire; he knew he hadn’t moved. 

He was also on a broom, flying swiftly across the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts. 

It was like a Pensieve, but warmer and more immersive.

If he hadn’t already realized that Fred and George were geniuses, he would have figured it out within thirty seconds of opening the box.

The sun was warm on his skin and the breeze was cool on his face. He glanced down to see whether he was wearing Gryffindor Quidditch robes. As soon as he thought of it, he saw that he was. 

Did he have a Beater’s bat in his hand?

Of course he did. The twins were Beaters, after all, like Sirius himself had been. 

The first Bludger came toward him so quickly that he couldn’t swing at it; he had to roll over and over to avoid being hit. There was a sound of exasperation from the crowd. Had the crowd been there all along?

He was ready for the next Bludger, and the satisfying crack as it connected with his bat sent shocks of delight through his whole body.

They were playing Slytherin, of course. It was always Slytherin when emotions ran this high. With every crack of his bat, he sent another Bludger (apparently there were dozens of Bludgers in this game, but that didn’t seem odd at all) at another green-robed Slytherin.

Sometimes it was Bellatrix, even though she had never wasted time on Quidditch.

Sometimes it was one of the foolish, inbred Lestrange brothers. 

Sometimes it was pale, arrogant Lucius Malfoy. 

But as the dream went on, more and more it was Severus Snape. Sirius sent one Bludger after another at his oversized nose. He pelted Snape’s thin body with Bludgers. Bludgers whizzed through Snape’s greasy hair.

Then Sirius thought that they were playing Quidditch so James must be there. He must have summoned James by thinking of him because the Bludger hit James in the face, because James was where Snape should have been, and James’ glasses shattered, and James was falling falling falling, James who had never fallen off his broom, James who might as well have been born on a broom, James was gone and Sirius knew it was forever…

Sirius snapped back to reality and blinked at the fire in the fireplace. 

He composed himself before the twins came pounding down the stairs. He didn’t want them to think there was something wrong with their charmwork.

* * *

Sirius knew that he ought to be delighted when he returned to the Dueling Club as a full-fledged member. Nothing was more important than Harry’s safety, and Sirius couldn’t keep Harry safe if he couldn’t keep himself alive.

He worked diligently at casting minor spells with his left hand while casting major spells with the wand in his right hand. 

“That’s a real duelist’s wand,” said Jacob Garrison admiringly after he and Sirius were forced to call it a draw in the final match of the night.

It took everything in Sirius not to hex him.

It wasn’t a duelist’s wand. 

It was his wand.

No, it wasn’t his wand.

His wand had been snapped as punishment for killing James.

That wand had been black, and this wand was white, and he didn’t understand why wands had to be so fucking on the nose with their symbolism. 

No one had ever snapped Severus Snape’s wand. All Snape had done was join the Death Eaters with the intent of murdering anyone of Muggle birth (a particularly rich life plan considering the bastard was a half-blood). All Snape had done was torture, kill, and maim. All Snape had done was slither off to his megalomaniacal overlord with the suggestion that he kill an infant. And when the megalomaniacal overlord hadn’t quite managed it, Dumbledore had rewarded Snape with a job and a home while Sirius had submitted to torture and Remus had struggled to feed himself and James had been dead in the ground.

Sirius composed himself before Garrison saw the scowl on his face. He didn’t want the Dueling Club to expel him until he’d learned everything he possibly could to defend Harry in a world where love was punished and barbarism was rewarded.

* * *

Sirius knew that he ought to be delighted when he went to Andromeda’s usual family dinner. He had a family. Not everyone could say that.

But Andromeda’s cooking was worse than eating dirt. He missed those first weeks after Azkaban when he hadn’t been able to taste anything, because Andromeda’s cooking tasted like family.

She’d grown up eating what he’d grown up eating. She’d grown up to cook what they’d been raised to eat. Yes, she had adopted Muggle dishes that Ted liked. She had experimented. Her own tastes had evolved. She was cooking herself rather than ordering a house-elf about.

But she hadn’t completely eliminated the foundation that had been laid for her. Some of the flavors, some of the textures, some of the choices, some of the techniques had become a part of Andromeda long before Andromeda had met Ted and seized control of her own destiny. 

“Do you not like roast lamb anymore, Sirius?” Andromeda asked. “It was your favorite when you were a little boy.”

It had been, and that was why she’d made it.

He didn’t deserve that kind of thoughtfulness.

He wasn’t a little boy.

He’d been bad even when he’d been a little boy, even though he thought he’d been good.

He remembered the first time he’d seen James on the Hogwarts Express. That had been the first memory he’d pulled out of his head and placed in the Pensieve for Harry on their very first night together in Remus’ terrible cottage.

He couldn’t remember whether he’d let Harry see Severus Snape enter the memory. He probably had. Harry had laughed so hard when Sirius had said _Snivellus_ instead of _Severus_ , and Sirius had been gratified, pleased to have the approval of James’ doppelgänger.

At eleven years old, James had been in a train compartment with a woman he would marry and two men who would help kill him.

He couldn’t say any of that to Andromeda, of course. “The roast lamb is delicious, Anna,” he said. “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day.”

“Not too long a day to duel with me?” asked Tonks, bright eyed and turquoise-haired. 

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “You wouldn’t get a good duel out of me today.”

She looked like she might pout. She probably wanted to get him alone so she could swoon over Remus as if they were the stars of one of the Weasley twins’ prepackaged daydreams. 

He did not want to hear about how wonderful Remus was from Remus’ inappropriately young bride.

He ought to tell Andromeda and Ted everything. How Remus was too old and too poor for their daughter. How he had traveled through time and changed reality. How he had once abandoned their pregnant daughter during a war. _How he was a werewolf._

Ted and Andromeda wouldn’t like that at all. They’d put a stop to things before things went wrong for Tonks and Remus like they’d gone wrong for Lily and James, thanks to Saint Snivellus, Dumbledore’s favorite boy, and why wouldn’t Remus just let Snivelly kill Dumbledore? Dumbledore could live with the consequences of his actions just as well as anyone else.

“You’ve never refused to duel with me,” Tonks said. “Not even when it was a terrible idea. Are you cheating on me with another Auror?”

The sound of his own laugh startled him. “I’m cheating on you with an entire dueling club Horace Slughorn sent me to,” he told her. “Take it up with your mother if you have a problem with it.”

Tonks made a face at Andromeda and Andromeda made the same face back. It was strange to Sirius. Andromeda had _not_ been raised to make faces.

The surprise jolted Sirius into remembering that he didn’t want Andromeda or Ted or Tonks to think anything was wrong. He composed himself and drew his wand. “You’re right,” he said to Tonks. “Let’s go.” He rose and took Tonks’ arm before she could trip over the table leg. 

How Tonks could be so clumsy when she was standing up from a table or walking across a room but so steady when she was dueling was beyond Sirius’ comprehension. He supposed that it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they both sharpened their skills so they would be ready to face whatever came their way if the Death Eaters rose again. 

He was half-surprised that Dumbledore hadn’t just hired Bellatrix to teach Herbology. If Harry had to learn from the man who had sent Voldemort after his parents, why not make Neville Longbottom learn from the woman who had tortured his parents into insanity? It was all the same in Dumbledore’s eyes, no doubt. 

He was distracted. Tonks’ spell hit him hard, and he was only half-able to block her next spell as he tumbled to his knees.

He regrouped faster than she had expected and he used the opportunity to hit her once, twice, three times. She fell as if dead. The duel was over.

He hadn’t expected finally defeating his upstart little cousin in their friendly matches to be so anticlimactic, he reflected as he helped her to her feet.

“Congratulations,” she said, and she sounded genuinely pleased for him.

He ought to have been happy about it.

* * *

He knew that he ought to be delighted to be meeting with Félicité short hours before the March full moon. He didn’t ordinarily look forward to their sessions, but this one was special because this one would be their last. He hadn’t cared for the idea in the first place. He’d just wanted to convince Remus— and more importantly himself— that he had taken every opportunity to make himself strong enough to support Harry if Harry needed it.

Now he knew that he had been right all along. There was no making things better.

He decided not to tell Félicité that this would be their last meeting. She was merely doing research; one rarely knew where research ended. Soon she would be spending all of her time preparing her champion for the last task of the Triwizard Tournament. Their schedules would no longer match. There was no need for an argument or a goodbye.

She conjured the vibrating ball of light. “What color should it be?” she asked.

“Black,” he said before he could stop himself.

She gave him a look that let him know that that was not an acceptable answer. It was nothing like as powerful as Professor McGonagall’s look had been back when Sirius had been in school. “Blue,” Sirius said to humor her. He could be polite to Félicité for a last hour or two. He could ignore her and look forward to moonrise. (Perhaps Remus would finally get it together enough to spar properly?)

“Picture a negative image in your mind,” she told him. “Picture the image the dementors showed you the most often.”

He’d meant to ignore her, but instead he remembered James and Lily lying in the wreckage of their house in Godric’s Hollow. James in the front room; Lily in the nursery. 

“How disturbing is the image on a scale of one to ten?” she asked.

“Ten.” He might as well answer honestly. It wouldn’t matter. In three hours the moon would be up, and he would be a dog. 

“The blue ball of light began jumping between his left hand and his right. “Think of everything about the memory. What do you see?”

_James’ glasses askew. Lily’s hair tangled with debris. The odd frozen-surprised expression that Avada Kedavra left behind._

“What do you smell?”

_Smoke. Dust._

“What are you touching?”

_He was clenching his own wand, the good wand, the black wand. He was holding it too tightly, but it didn’t matter. Everything was over. The ground was crunching and crumbling beneath his feet._

“What do you taste?”

_He was inhaling the dust. His mouth tasted of ashes._

“What do you hear?”

_He didn’t hear anything. Voldemort was gone. James and Lily were dead. Godric’s Hollow was silent._

“On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?”

“Ten,” he said, and his voice wasn’t his own. That would always be the answer. No vibrating ball of blue light could make it otherwise.

“Are you ready for another set?”

“Yes.” Nothing would ever change. Therefore, he would always be ready.

“What do you see?”

_James’ glasses askew. Lily’s hair tangled with debris. The odd frozen-surprised expression that Avada Kedavra left behind. The collapsed wall. The broken toy broomstick in the middle of what had been the floor. The broken glass._

“What do you smell?”

_Smoke. Dust. Citrus-scented shampoo. Potatoes that they must have cooked that evening. Harry’s milky-baby powder scent._

“What are you touching?”

_He was clenching his own wand, the good wand, the black wand. He was holding it too tightly, but it didn’t matter. Everything was over. The ground was crunching and crumbling beneath his feet._

_The air was hot on his face. It was the end of October, and well into the night. The air shouldn’t have been hot. But it was. The heat radiated from everything in the house._

“What do you taste?”

_Dust. Ashes._

“What do you hear?”

_He didn’t hear anything._

“On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?”

“Nine,” he said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. It hadn’t been as bad the second time as the first. He wondered if he was numbing himself to the memory. He wondered if he wanted that.

“How are you feeling? Physically?”

They’d done this before, and he knew that there were expected answers: tension in his shoulders, perhaps, or a headache or an upset stomach. He didn’t feel any of them, and he told her so.

“Do you want to do it again?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. He would do this correctly, and then he would give up the game and go play with Remus.

“What do you see?”

_James’ glasses askew. Lily’s hair tangled with debris. The odd frozen-surprised expression that Avada Kedavra left behind. The collapsed wall. The broken toy broomstick in the middle of what had been the floor. The broken glass._

_There were books scattered the length of the house. They’d been trapped inside, in hiding; reading would have been a default activity._

_The front room was coated with glass; photographs had exploded out of their frames. There was James and Lily’s wedding photo. There were a thousand photos of Harry that had been arranged in a sort of collage. Harry eating; Harry getting a bath in the sink; Harry hugging a toy lion; Harry flying on a toy broom; Harry sleeping; Harry laughing._

_There was also a photograph of the four of them: James and Sirius and Remus and Peter. It had been taken just before they’d begun their seventh year at Hogwarts. He’d seen it recently; Remus’ father had had a copy and they’d made a copy for Harry. He’d told Remus he hadn’t thought he’d seen it before even though he’d remembered posing for it._

_He’d been wrong. He’d seen it._

“What do you smell?”

_Smoke. Dust. Citrus-scented shampoo. Potatoes that they must have cooked that evening. Harry’s milky-baby powder scent._

_Burning flesh. Avada Kedavra didn’t do that, but the explosion might have._

_Blood. Urine._

“What are you touching?”

_He was clenching his own wand, the good wand, the black wand. He was holding it too tightly, but it didn’t matter. Everything was over. The ground was crunching and crumbling beneath his feet._

_The air was hot on his face. It was the end of October, and well into the night. The air shouldn’t have been hot. But it was. The heat radiated from everything in the house._

_The cat brushed against his ankles and he only just stopped himself from hexing it. How had the cat survived? Had it been outside, and then returned?_

“What do you taste?”

_Dust. Ashes._

“What do you hear?”

_He didn’t hear anything._

“On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?”

“Eight,” he said. He wondered what had happened to the cat. He wondered if he would remember. He wondered if he cared. “Let’s go again.”

The blue ball resumed bouncing between his hands.

“What do you see?”

_Corpses. Debris._

_His motorcycle was behind him. It had been too risky to Apparate anywhere near Godric’s Hollow; the flying motorcycle had, oddly enough, been faster and safer._

“What do you smell?”

_Burning flesh. Now that he’d noticed it, the more subtle smells had faded._

“What are you touching?”

_The wand, the air, the cat._

_A hand the size of a rubbish bin lid on his shoulder. Hagrid was there. Hagrid had gotten there before he had. Sent by Dumbledore, of course. What had Dumbledore known, and when, and how?_

_He’d known that Snape had told Voldemort about the prophecy and sent Voldemort to murder Harry._

_Had Snape given him the date of the event? Had Dumbledore put Hagrid on standby just in case, without warning James and Lily?_

_Had he warned James and Lily?_

_No, James hadn’t known. His wand hadn’t been in his hand. He had thought he was safe._

“What do you taste?”

_Dust. Ashes._

“What do you hear?”

_A baby crying._

_He’d heard Harry crying, but he hadn’t gone to him. He hadn’t stepped over Lily’s corpse and gathered the living baby into his arms. Hagrid had done that._

_“Give him to me, Hagrid. I’m his godfather. I’m his guardian. James and Lily wanted—”_

_“Dumbledore wants me ter take him ter Lily’s sister.”_

_Dumbledore had made the decision to take Harry away from Sirius before Sirius had ever done anything to get himself sent to Azkaban._

_Sirius was shaking too hard to hold Harry anyway. Hagrid was holding onto both of them._

_He told Hagrid to take the motorcycle. Hagrid didn’t have any other way of getting into a Muggle neighborhood, and Harry had to be safe._

_For Harry to be safe, Peter had to be caught._

_No._

_Snape. Dumbledore. In a magical war, there was no way to tell who could be trusted._

_He never should have let Harry go._

_He should have remembered Harry’s cries._

_He stared at the bloody gash on Harry’s forehead._

_Who tried to murder a baby?_

_Voldemort. Wormtail. Snape._

_Who sent that baby to be thrown in a cupboard under the stairs when his godfather-guardian wanted him?_

_Dumbledore._

_Who hadn’t fought for Harry in the first place?_

_He hadn’t._

_Hagrid hadn’t been a fully qualified wizard. He performed unpredictable magic with the broken pieces of a wand concealed inside an umbrella. Sirius could have taken Harry. Sirius hadn’t had to listen to the directions of a man who coddled Severus Snape, who had sent Voldemort after Harry in the first place._

“On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?”

“Six,” Sirius lied. He knew the number was supposed to go down, not up.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. No changes.”

“You’re shaking, Sirius,” said Félicité.

He’d been shaking in the memory. He hadn’t realized that it had carried over to the present.

He made it stop.

Blacks knew how to control themselves. This was no different from a family dinner thirty years in the past.

_You will wear the robes the house-elf has laid out for you. You will not put them on backwards. You will not skip any buttons. You will not add any accessories. You will not change the colors or the cut. You will not wrinkle your robes, tear your robes, or get your robes dirty._

_The first one of you girls to complain that she can't breathe in her dress robes will find her dress robes to be spelled one size smaller. If you can speak to complain, you can breathe._

_You will not speak until you are spoken to. When you speak, you will not discuss Muggles, Mudbloods, bodily fluids, anything that makes you unhappy, and above all you will not mention this conversation._

_You will sit up straight. You will not squirm, wiggle, twist, swing your feet, or otherwise move other than as necessary to eat or to make eye contact with the adult who has addressed you._

_You will not, under any circumstances, make eye contact with each other._

_And by Merlin's green Slytherin tie, Sirius, keep all four legs of your chair on the floor at all times or you will find the chair stuck to the ground and yourself stuck to the chair. Again!_

He looked Félicité in the eye. He had never cared much about his eyes one way or another, but he had always known that other people admired them. Many purebloods’ eyes were grey, and the Blacks were said to have a shade all their own.

He saw Félicité look at his eyes instead of into them. 

He’d been able to convince George and Fred that he’d seen nothing in their daydream but Quidditich. He’d been able to convince the Dueling Club that their matches were all on good fun. He’d been able to convince Andromeda and her family that he’d just been a bit tired the last time he visited.

He could certainly convince Félicité that everything was fine before she started asking questions the answers to which were none of her business.

“I think I’m shaking from sitting here for too long,” he said with a smile. He arose and walked into his kitchen. “Would you like a drink, Félicité, before you walk back to the school?”

“No, thank you.” He heard her stand up; he felt her watching him. “I don’t know that we should end now. I won’t ask what you were thinking about—”

“Good, because I shan’t tell you,” said Sirius with all the pleasantness he could muster.

“I think you were in the middle of something.”

“Nothing we can’t pick up next time.” He had been wise not to tell her that there would never be a next time. “Even if you don’t have plans tonight, I do.” Plans that involved a bloodthirsty monster. Remus had better be ready to act like a wolf instead of a puppy.

He ushered Félicité out the door and prepared to spend the night at Hogwarts. He decided to sneak into the school through the Honeydukes tunnel rather than risk Félicité seeing him and asking why they hadn’t walked from Hogsmeade together. 

As usual, the students were easy enough to avoid. They were chattering about classes and dates and Quidditch. 

A few of them were passing around what he recognized as Weasley products. One of the boxes— a sort of firecracker— exploded.

It smelled of smoke and dust.

He felt the heat on his face.

He forsook all thoughts of discretion and ran.

He let himself into Remus’ office, and then Remus’ inner rooms. (Current password: “pink hair.”)

As usual, Remus’ evening meal was sitting untouched on the shelf. The smell of potatoes mixed with the smell of smoke and dust.

Lily and James had definitely eaten potatoes a few hours before Voldemort murdered them. The smell had lingered in the air where the destroyed house had stood. No one alive but Sirius remembered that. 

“Sirius?” asked Remus, voice laden with concern. Sirius hadn’t heard Remus enter. But then, Remus hadn’t entered. These were his rooms and Sirius had come in without knocking.

(Sirius hadn’t heard Hagrid enter the house in Godric’s Hollow, either, because Hagrid had already been there.)

“Sirius?” Remus repeated, closer this time. Sirius didn’t look at him. He could stare down Félicité but he couldn’t stare down Remus.

“I want Lily and James,” said Sirius, and somehow a sob ripped its way out of his throat.

_**To be continued.** _


	38. The Long Night

Remus suspected that he might have outsmarted himself.

He’d asked Sirius to join him on the full moons so he would be able to keep an eye on Sirius under the guise of letting Sirius keep an eye on him. It had been a good plan up until the moment that Sirius actually needed him, and he was five minutes from becoming a monster who couldn’t talk to, soothe, or physically restrain his friend.

He reflected, not for the first time or the hundredth or the thousandth, that he hated being a werewolf.

“What happened, Padfoot?” he asked.

Sirius shook his head. 

“Why don’t you sit down?”

Sirius shook his head a second time.

Sirius wasn’t up to talking and he wasn’t up to moving. Ordering him to transform himself into a dog seemed a rather uncouth request. He wasn’t certain that Sirius would be able to do it even if he wanted to. Sirius looked the next thing to catatonic.

That would be a problem if this was the time Severus Snape had failed to brew the potion perfectly. There was no question that Severus would love it if Remus bit Sirius. Severus would consider that the great achievement of his life, an irony that proved that there was a deity and that that deity loved Severus best.

Remus looked at his watch. He had two minutes at most. 

He could throw Sirius out of his office right at the moment when Sirius looked like he was a danger to himself and everyone else.

He looked at Sirius’ shattered face. No, he couldn’t do that.

He would have to trust the potion, and, failing that, he would have to trust that Sirius would manage to transform if he was actually confronted with an unrestrained werewolf.

The first shudder ran down Remus’ spine. That meant that he ought to be counting in seconds, not minutes.

“Well, Padfoot,” he said in his most pleasant, most measured tone. “I’m going to become a bloodthirsty monster in about forty-five seconds, but please don’t let that make you feel unwelcome. You know I’m always happy to see you.”

Sirius didn’t respond.

“Help yourself to anything you want. I’d get it for you, but as you know, wolves don’t have opposable thumbs and we aren’t very good with wands.”

The second shudder was more emphatic, and Remus scrambled awkwardly into the bedroom, closing the door behind him as he went. If the potion didn’t work— if he lost his mind in the next fifteen seconds— the door wouldn’t restrain the wolf for long, but it might give Sirius enough time to snap back to himself and transform.

Should he have called for help? He knew for a fact that Sirius wouldn’t want to see anyone else, and if Remus Lupin called for help on the night of a full moon there would be no avoiding Severus Snape…

Remus shuddered at the thought of Severus seeing Sirius like this. Or perhaps he shuddered not with the thought but with the moon.

He divested himself of his robes as the shaking started in earnest.

Bones cracked. Muscles twisted. Fur burned through skin.

He was a wolf, and he knew that he was a wolf. _Cogito, ergo sum._ He wasn’t quite sure that this was what that was meant to mean.

Severus had brewed the potion perfectly, as always. That was Remus’ worst fear for the night eliminated, but his second-worst fear for the night was bad enough to be going on with.

The door to the bedroom slowly opened and Sirius entered. An uncharitable part of Remus considered, just briefly, that Sirius might have set him up. Every month since Remus had begun taking Wolfsbane Potion, Sirius had suggested that he take his human form once Remus transformed. Every month, Remus had refused. He’d refused in the future-past, as well; neither Sirius nor Dora nor any of the other well-intentioned members of the Order had ever been allowed in the room with him no matter how sure they were of the potion’s effectiveness.

Sirius had never liked to be told “no.” As a grown man, Sirius still insisted upon kicking his chair back onto two legs because he’d been told “no” as a five-year-old attending his first family dinner. 

Was Sirius so desperate to get his way that he would concoct a situation in which Remus wouldn’t have the heart to tell him “no?” Sirius had always been just a bit too dismissive of the wolf’s power. The last time they’d spoken, Sirius had implied that he’d been in the right to tell Severus how to get past the Whomping Willow nineteen years before. Mightn’t Sirius do whatever it took to experience being a human alone in a room with a werewolf now? 

From his place on the floor, Remus stared up at Sirius as he stood in the doorway.

No, he decided. Sirius wasn’t this good of an actor. His skin was too pale; Remus could see it even more clearly in wolfish-greyscale than through human eyes. The echoes of wetness on Sirius’ cheeks weren’t the product of any spell. 

Remus noticed, too, Sirius’ sweat stank of fear. (Reason #732 that Remus hated his wolf form: the wolf’s instinctive ability to determine someone’s mood by the smell of his sweat. It was an invasion. It was barbaric. And it was disgusting.)

_What are you afraid of, Sirius?_

Wouldn’t Sirius have taken action if something needed doing? He wouldn’t have come here, to a useless old man trapped in a wolf’s body, if something dreadful was about to occur.

Besides, Remus was certain that the only thing that truly frightened Sirius was the possibility of losing Harry. If anything had happened to Harry, Remus would have known. Remus had seen Harry earlier that day! He’d let three of Harry’s classmates try to disarm him at once. (They hadn’t managed it; in short weeks, Harry’s shield charm had become almost unbreakable.) 

Remus stared at Sirius, but Sirius didn’t look back at Remus. No, this hadn’t been a lark to get a look at a werewolf through human eyes. Sirius didn’t even seem to notice that he was three feet away from a fully grown werewolf.

As Remus watched, Sirius took four or five halting steps toward the bed (normally two long strides would have done it) and collapsed atop it, shivering violently. 

Remus remembered the first nights they’d spent together in the the cottage in Yorkshire. Sirius had been uninterested in casting magic other than the silencing charms and locking charms which kept Remus out of his bedroom and his terrible dreams. At the time, Remus had been desperate to think of ways to help; the offerings of hot chocolate and crossword puzzles and warming charms had been pitiful and insufficient. He’d been useless, and now he was worse than useless.

He sat on his haunches and observed Sirius’ prone form. He couldn’t believe that he’d considered, even for a fraction of a second, that Sirius wasn’t really in the throes of some sort of waking nightmare. Remus was awful.

Remus had dragged Sirius back from beyond the grave and he hadn’t given Sirius the tools he needed to live again. Perhaps it wasn’t even possible to give Sirius the tools he needed to live again. Sirius’ pain might well be Remus’ punishment for manipulating time; time travel never, never came without repercussions. And no spell was meant to wake the dead. Children learned as much from infancy when their parents told them the _Tales of Beedle the Bard_. He could almost hear his mother’s voice as she read from his father’s old copy of the book:

_The second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him._

_Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered…_

_Sad and cold. That sounded about right. Perhaps Sirius hadn’t recovered the first time because people who had spent a dozen years imprisoned in Azkaban weren’t meant to recover._

Or perhaps Remus could learn something from the future-past and try not to make the same mistakes he had in his first life. The concrete details were easy enough to change: Capture Peter Pettigrew. Capture Barty Crouch, Junior. Keep Harry’s name out of the Goblet of Fire. Mitigate the damage to the Weasley twins by making certain that Sirius gave them their startup loan when Harry would no longer be perfectly positioned to do it. 

The relationships were harder. 

Be more available to Harry, yes, but how and in what context? Had the conversations about his parents during private lessons before Sirius arrived been enough? Was pulling Harry into Cedric’s training enough now that Sirius was around enough?

Be a more willing partner to Dora, yes, but where was the line between willingness and pushing? How could he even discern whether she would be happy with him without the aphrodisiac of war looming over them? Would he ruin her life in a world that wasn’t torn by war?

And then there was Sirius. 

Remus rose to his feet, briefly disconcerted by the sensation of having four instead of two, as he always was in the first few moments after a transformation. It had happened to his friends when they had first become Animagi, too— he had a Patronus-worthy memory of James tangling the stag’s legs so badly he’d fallen and lodged his antlers into the wall—but their transformations had become less jarring as they practiced. For Remus, the dizziness never seemed to abate.

His long claws clicked against the floor. The sound of his claws clicking on the floor was reason #400 that he hated being a werewolf. The feeling of having claws was reason #251. And the fact that he had claws at all was reason #7. They were a part of the curse that he could never forget, not even when the moon was new, because his fingernails would permanently scar a human. There was a scar on Sirius’ wrist thanks to Remus. Sirius didn’t seem to care. Remus did.

He reached a trunk that sat against the far wall. It took two or three tries to nose it open. Extracting the quilt inside was easier, though he hoped against hope that his teeth wouldn’t do permanent damage. He was reasonably certain that he couldn’t turn the quilt into a werequilt, but a lifetime spent in poverty meant that he vastly preferred not to put holes in his possessions.

He dragged the quilt across the floor and onto Sirius’ body. Sirius didn’t react. _Sirius didn’t react to a wolf casually attempting to tuck him into bed._

He brushed his nose against Sirius’ hand. Sirius didn’t respond. Sirius was cold.

Sirius was dead?

No, Sirius was breathing. Breathing raggedly. Still crying a bit, most likely.

Human hands and a human voice would have been rather useful right about now, but that wasn’t an option. Remus jumped onto the bed beside Sirius. 

The bed shifted under his weight. Sirius finally turned his head; his face was at once pale and flushed. (Was that even possible? Was that a trick of the wolf’s grayish vision tempered by a human mind?)

Sirius reached out with one pale, shaking hand and carded his fingers through the fur just behind Remus’ ears. 

Remus’ entire being went white with pleasure. Every nerve in his body fired simultaneously at the caress. He barely heard Sirius’ laughter.

“I’ve always wanted to do that to you,” said Sirius roughly. He continued to stroke Remus’ fur, and Remus felt his body relax completely. He sank more deeply into the bed; his mind floated away and hovered somewhere in another world where there was nothing but peace and happiness and love.

“There’s nothing that feels as good as getting scratched behind your ears when you’re a dog,” Sirius was saying. “The only thing that comes close is… well, we won’t talk about the other thing that feels like that because the person doing it to you would be my baby cousin.”

Remus’ mind returned to his body. He was glad that Sirius was talking. He also wished Sirius would talk about something else. More than anything, he was disturbed that Sirius was right about the similarities between the two sensations.

“I hate that you’re going to marry Nymphadora,” Sirius said with real bitterness. His hand came to rest against Remus’ stomach— not threatening, but no longer affectionate. 

Remus wasn’t surprised. No one who cared about Dora ought to be supportive of their relationship. He might have expected Sirius— Sirius who simply could not take the horror of all that the word _werewolf_ entailed seriously— to be the exception, but he wasn’t _surprised_.

Sirius’ flippant reaction to learning that Remus had married Dora made more sense now. Their lives were currently so deeply entwined thanks to Voldemort and his Horcruxes that Sirius had decided not to say anything. He had covered his true feelings with grins and quips. The remark about Simona MacAlastair had been disgusting even for Sirius. No wonder.

“I almost told Andromeda and Ted about you last week, you know. They would have made Tonks end it right there. They’d have given both of you hell if I broke the news to them the right way. Or the wrong way.”

If wolves had been capable of laughter, Remus would have laughed. Sirius, who was so wise and so clever, ought to have known that no one made Dora do anything. Criticism only made her dig her heels in harder.

In that way, she was exactly like her cousin Sirius.

“I didn’t, of course.”

Yes, that was obvious.

“I hope you know I wouldn’t. What was that you said the other day? That you made the mistake of not trusting me before and you wouldn’t do it again?”

Right. He had said that. And he thought he’d meant it. And he’d meant to mean it. And he probably did mean it. 

And it really wasn’t fair that wolves couldn’t talk.

“But I still hate it. At least she already likes me. That gives me a better starting point than with James and Lily, right? It was one thing for her to forgive James for being an idiot. She loved him. When she decided to take all of us in the package— well, I guess she never really minded you— anyway, less chance of Tonks telling you to get rid of me.”

On the other hand, perhaps it didn’t matter that wolves couldn’t talk. Remus would have been speechless anyway. He never would have fathomed that Sirius had worried that Lily could have upended his friendship with James even if she’d wanted to. He would have suspected even less that Sirius worried that Remus getting married would do anything to affect the relationship between the two surviving Marauders. (Peter having been retroactively removed as a Marauder, of course.)

“Just because I’ve told you this doesn’t mean I don’t get to be godfather to your son, by the way.”

His fingers were twining in Remus’ fur again. It didn’t feel bad. 

“Harry’s too young. I know he was the only one around the first time you did this, but he can have your second child.”

Remus hadn’t dared to dream of having a second child. He could barely wrap his mind around Teddy. He and Dora had both been only children, for a variety of good reasons, and they hadn’t been particularly worse-off for it.

But she’d enjoyed pregnancy, she’d enjoyed motherhood, she might want to have a second child… and now that he knew that he wasn’t going to impregnate her with a wold that were tear her open from the inside, he wasn’t entirely averse to the idea.

“I’d be a good godfather to Teddy,” said Sirius almost plaintively. 

How had Sirius even known Teddy’s name? Remus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he hadn’t mentioned it. 

“I bet you didn’t know I knew his name,” continued Sirius as if he could read Remus’ thoughts. “You told me that first night that you couldn’t tell me his name because if I knew I’d figure out who his mother was. I don’t know whether I would have or not. But you called him by name the other day. Said you wanted to see him again. Named him after Ted, did you? Born right after Ted died, I should think?”

Yes. It had been awful. Ted deserved better. Dora deserved better. Andromeda deserved better.

“I know I failed Harry.”

Remus’ head shot up. He, personally, didn’t believe anything of the kind, and knew that Harry felt likewise. Harry had always felt likewise, in this reality and in the other one.

“Don’t argue with me, Moony.”

It was bloody difficult to have an argument when you couldn’t talk. For form’s sake, Remus curled his lip and snarled anyway.

“I mean it. Did you know— did you know that even before I got myself sent to Azkaban, Dumbledore decided that he was going to keep Harry away from me?”

There was no way Remus could have known that. He wondered whether Sirius “knew” it, either, since Sirius also seemed to be laboring under the mistaken impression that he had somehow failed Harry. 

Remus would have made a list of things he was going to say to Sirius when he could talk again, but in addition to being mute, wolves couldn’t hold quill to parchment very well. He was going to have to keep the list in his mind:

_Yes, Sirius, you can be Teddy’s godfather._

_Yes, Sirius, I trust you completely but sometimes I forget._

_Yes, Sirius, you can stay with me in human form at the full moons from now on but only if you promise to scratch behind my ears and refrain from comparing it to sex._

_No, Sirius, you have not failed Harry and I will personally drum that into your thick skull by any means necessary._

“I never really thought about it until today. Then I remembered. When I went to— when I realized what Peter had done and I went to their house and found it like— like it still is— Harry was crying. Of course he was crying. His home exploded, his mother died in front of him, and he’s just taken a killing curse to his forehead. I didn’t even hear it. I didn’t go to him. I didn’t pull him out of the wreckage. Hagrid did.”

A whine escaped Remus’ throat without permission. He could imagine it in his mind’s eye. He didn’t like what he saw.

“I asked Hagrid to give Harry to me, and Hagrid said no. Hagrid said he was going to his aunt and uncle, Dumbledore’s orders, that was that. And I didn’t fight it. I could have fought off Hagrid. I could have taken Harry then and there, told Hagrid that this was my godchild, and I knew what his parents wanted for him, and I didn’t give a fuck what Dumbledore told Hagrid because it wasn’t his decision to make. I could have done that. But I was shaking so hard I would have dropped Harry if I’d tried to pick him up…”

Sirius was shaking again. Remus shimmied closer to him. It didn’t seem to help.

“I had this idea that I’d forfeited my rights to Harry when I convinced James to make Peter the Secret-Keeper. I decided the only thing I could do was make sure Peter never came back to hurt him again. You know what happened next. I was stupid and I was reckless and I… I deserved those twelve years in Azkaban, but Harry never deserved what he got.”

Remus growled again. Sirius ignored him.

“I want Lily and James.”

_So do I._

“I want to say I’m sorry. They shouldn’t forgive me. They shouldn’t ever forgive me. They should hear it, though.”

_You never intended for any of this to happen. There is nothing to forgive. If they think there is, they forgive you._

“This is hopeless.”

_Weren’t you just appointing yourself Teddy’s godfather? Nothing is hopeless if we have Teddy and Harry._

_I wish I could tell you that time is a healer, but I don’t think you’d hear me if I could. Yes, you’re beyond platitudes— even platitudes that happen to be true._

Sirius didn’t say anything else, but having spoken at all seemed to have eased some of his burden. He kicked off his boots and straightened out the quilt Remus had awkwardly draped over him before lying down again and brushing his hand along Remus’ back. Remus didn’t mind the petting, and he didn’t mind the tears that fell into his fur, but he minded not being able to do more. 

He would do more in the morning.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the sun was rising and he was human.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Direct quote from Tales of Beedle the Bard, marked as such, in this chapter.


	39. The Conversation 2

Every inch of Remus’ body ached as if he had been beaten.

That is to say, he felt much better than he had ever before felt the morning after a full moon.

He ran through the usual questions.

_Did I hurt anyone?_

No.

_How bad are my injuries?_

There were none.

_Do they need professional treatment? Can I afford professional treatment? How visible are they? How suspicious do I look?_

He rose without thinking and walked to the mirror. He looked tired. 

He didn’t look anything more than tired, regardless of the mirror’s exhortations that he ought to comb his hair.

_What do I remember about last night?_

Everything until he’d fallen asleep. 

The problem was that he didn’t remember transforming back.

He looked at Sirius, who was watching him.

Right. Sirius was more important than his little memory lapse.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“You slept through your transformation. I didn’t think that was even possible.”

“Nor did I.” The frantic need to know what had happened battled with his concern for Sirius. “Are you certain that I did?”

“Yes. I had my hand on you. I was petting you. You have very nice fur, by the way. Good soft undercoat. Watch out that no one skins you and sells you as a cloak.”

“Well, now you know why I never wanted you around during my transformations unless you were a dog.”

He made short work of cleaning himself up and dressing in fresh robes before suggesting that Sirius do the same. “You should take a real shower instead of using magic,” he added, thinking that the water would feel soothing to someone who had spent half the night sweating and crying. 

Sirius scowled and, ever contrary, aimed his wand at himself, cleaning his body and his robes with one wordless spell.

“I should go,” said Sirius quickly.

“And disappoint Harry? He looks forward to having breakfast with you on the morning after the full moon.” It was a low blow, but Remus didn’t care. Sirius wasn’t going anywhere until they’d had a conversation in which they were both capable of human speech. Sirius probably wasn’t going anywhere even after they’d had that conversation. 

“I mean after I have breakfast with Harry,” Sirius muttered.

Remus opened the door to his outer office and was unsurprised to find Harry waiting for Sirius, idly playing with a Snitch the way James had used to do. 

“Are you having breakfast with us?” asked Harry. “Are you teaching today? You look…” he trailed off, apparently choosing not to point out that Remus looked less like death warmed over than might reasonably be expected.

“I don’t believe I could wrestle my classes away from Mad-Eye,” Remus answered. “I’m going to go down to the Great Hall to see if he minds if I stop in a few times throughout the day.” That hadn’t exactly been his plan, but now that he’d said it seemed like a good idea. It would throw a wrench into any theories that his more observant students might have had about his illness and absences. “Will you do me a favor, Harry?”

Harry nodded, catching the Snitch one last time before returning it to his bag.

“Don’t let your godfather leave before I get back. I want to talk to him.”

“We have nothing to talk about, Remus,” said Sirius, sounding more than slightly irritated. 

“There are always things to talk about. We can discuss the weather and the Quidditch standings.”

“I will eat that plate instead of the eggs on it if you can tell me anything about the Quidditch standings.”

“The Ballycastle Bats defeated Puddlemere United earlier this week and as a result are top of the league.” He was aware of as much solely because he’d had to threaten three second-years with detention before they’d deigned to stop discussing it during his class. 

“That’s right!” said Harry. “Oliver Wood gave up the winning goal, and Fred and George were worried that he might hang himself.”

Remus wasn’t currently in the mood for casual jokes about suicide, but that wasn’t Harry’s fault. “Please keep your godfather from leaving and from eating anything that isn’t food.”

“Can’t he just transfigure the plate into more eggs?”

Remus glanced at Sirius, who still looked less than pleased with the whole situation. “Tell him to explain Gamp’s Law to you. Then tell him about how Seamus, Dean, and Ron couldn’t disarm you three-on-one in my class the other day.”

Harry grinned so brightly that Sirius smiled, too. Remus took that as his cue to leave.

* * *

Remus liked the Great Hall at breakfast time. He liked to watch the enchanted ceiling change colors with the sunrise. He liked to watch the sleepy children, quieter and more subdued than usual, serving toast to one another with casual intimacy. He liked the sausages cooked to perfection by the house-elves and the goblets full of pumpkin juice, too.

He waved good morning to a few of the bleary-eyed children who managed to look up long enough to notice him. Mad-Eye was sitting in Remus’ usual seat at the staff table, his false eye staring unblinkingly at Karkaroff. Remus smiled at the sight, and tried to pretend that he was smiling at the students instead. 

Dumbledore, who rarely missed much of anything (other than the fact that Severus Snape was a Death Eater who planned to kill him, of course) was the first to notice Remus. He quickly conjured an extra chair from thin air (no one conjured chairs like Dumbledore) and beckoned Remus to sit beside him.

“I didn’t expect you to join us this morning, Remus,” said Dumbledore pleasantly. 

Severus sent Remus his usual glare. “Severus made me an exceptional potion,” Remus returned, just to annoy Severus. It wasn’t fair to tease the man whose singular abilities made Remus’ life so very much easier, but Severus’ plans to murder Dumbledore weren’t fair either.

“It was no more exceptional than all of my potions,” Severus grumbled.

“Indeed, I have never seen Professor Lupin looking so well under the circumstances. He owes you a great debt of gratitude, Professor Snape,” said Dumbledore with a lightness that fooled no one.

“I do. Thank you, Professor Snape,” said Remus, knowing that Severus would hear mockery where there was none.

Severus turned away from them, apparently bored with the situation.

“You’ll be wanting your classes back?” asked Mad-Eye. 

“I would never deny you the opportunity to spend an entire day glaring at Igor Karkaroff,” Remus whispered.

“This eye doesn’t glare,” said Mad-Eye, briefly swiveling the false eye to face Remus. “All it does is see. If a man had nothing to hide, it won’t hurt anything.”

“Nonetheless, Alastor, I do believe that Igor has asked that you treat him less like a suspect while he is inside the castle,” said Dumbledore. Remus would have felt sorry for Dumbledore, who had manage a number rather strong personalities on a daily basis, had he not sensed that Dumbledore was more amused than annoyed with Mad-Eye’s singular focus.

“If I were treating him like a suspect, he’d know it,” said Mad-Eye. “I’m just here to take Remus’ classes.”

“Is it all right if I come by to visit for a few minutes during each class?”

“They’re your classes,” said Mad-Eye nonchalantly.

“Thank you.” He finished his breakfast in silence before returning to his office.

He could hear Harry and Sirius from halfway along the corridor. Harry was describing his latest Defense triumph in great detail, and Sirius was providing a willing audience. Remus decided not to interrupt. Instead, he sank to the floor (he was too tired to conjure a chair, and his chairs were nothing to Dumbledore’s, anyway) and summoned a quill and some parchment from a storage room.

Sirius had made it perfectly clear that he was not willing to discuss the things he had said during the night. If Sirius wasn’t going to listen, though, he might still read. So Remus wrote.

_Mr. Padfoot is advised of the following:_

_You have not failed your godson. He doesn’t think so and I don’t think so._

_I trust you completely._

_You may be Teddy’s godfather._

He thought of adding more: that it was possible to adjust to even the most all-encompassing grief given enough time, that he and Dora both wanted Sirius to be an integral part of any life they built together, that everything Sirius and thought and done during the first war was completely understandable to anyone who had been on the front lines.

In the end, he decided to keep it short and simple. He charmed the parchment so that it was burn-proof, tear-proof, and water-repellant. He was considering adding another charm that would keep the parchment from being folded when angry footsteps rang out down the hall.

“Remus Lupin!” The accusatory tone made him hastily tuck the parchment and quill away before he remembered that he was a moderately experienced professor, not a first year student.

“Poppy,” he began ingratiatingly.

“What are you doing sitting on the floor in a drafty corridor when you’re not well? Do I need to confine you to the hospital wing?”

In the background, Harry and Sirius’ voices quieted.

“I was just writing a note,” said Remus. “I was going to return to my office in a moment.”

“Why couldn’t you write a note from your office?” He glanced over Madam Pomfrey’s head at Sirius, who had entered the corridor along with Harry, but Sirius shrugged.

“That’s a reasonable question, Moony.” He slid around Madam Pomfrey and held out his arms to pull Remus to his feet. Remus took the opportunity to pass the note to Sirius. It felt like old times in the best of ways. Adults just didn’t get that many opportunities to pass notes to their friends.

Sirius’ eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he slid the note into his pocket. “Time for class, Harry,” he said. “You know how to find me if you need me.” Harry said his goodbyes and trotted off down the corridor.

Madam Pomfrey didn’t even wait for Remus to sit down inside his room before drawing her wand and beginning to examine him.

“I’m fine, Poppy,” he told her.

“If that’s the case, it’s all the more important that we ascertain why, is it not?” she asked. “The Headmaster told me that you looked remarkably well, although I doubt that it was his opinion that you ought to sit on a stone floor, either. What did you do this month that you don’t ordinarily do?”

“Nothing,” said Remus. He regretted the lie as soon as he told it. There were so few people— let alone skilled healers— who cared about making the lives of werewolves more comfortable. He had no doubt whatsoever that Madam Pomfrey’s questions were asked with the noblest of intentions. But he wasn’t going to put Sirius in the position of having to discuss anything that had happened the night before.

Madam Pomfrey made the noise in her throat that she always made when she disapproved of whatever students had been doing to disfigure themselves but refrained from comment because she wanted the students to be willing to return to her the next time whatever-it-was happened. (There was always a next time.)

As Madam Pomfrey continued her examination, Sirius surreptitiously removed the note from his pocket and read it. For a fraction of a second, his face crumbled and Remus could see, just faintly, that his eyes were still rimmed with red. Then Sirius composed himself and tucked the note away.

“I was with him last night,” Sirius said abruptly. “That was what was different.”

Madam Pomfrey cast a final, soothing spell in Remus’ direction before fixing her attention on Sirius. “I understood that you usually came to spend the night with him during the full moons. It hardly surprised me when Dumbledore told me, of course. I couldn’t chase you out of the Hospital Wing when you were students and his transformations were so much worse.”

“I do,” Sirius confirmed. “But I usually—” he snapped himself into the large, black dog rather than explaining. He returned to human form just as quickly. “I usually do that first. This is the only time I’ve ever been with him as a person instead of a dog.”

“What did the two of you do?”

And there was the question Remus hadn’t wanted Sirius to be forced to answer. Sirius, though, didn’t seem to mind. “Normally we fight. Play-fighting, like dogs and wolves do. Last night I was too tired to do anything, which is why I didn’t bother transforming. I just talked to him. And petted him. He has very nice fur.”

“Wolf fur is stiff and greasy,” Remus corrected. “I do not have nice fur.” He wasn’t prepared to concede that anything about the wolf was tolerable, let alone “nice.”

“It’s only the outer coat that’s stiff,” said Sirius with irritating didacticism. “The undercoat is soft.”

“Regardless of how the fur felt, I imagine that was at least part of why you had such a smooth transformation, Remus. Touch can be powerful. It can be healing.” 

Remus’ doubt must have shown on his face. He understood that touch was important for some people— Dora, for example— but he had known from the time that he was a small boy that he needed to be careful not to touch the people around him, and it had never bothered him.

“It’s true,” Madam Pomfrey said. “You’ve always been so responsible about protecting the people around you during a full moon. Knowing that the people around you are safe— so safe that your friend can sit with you and touch you—is an entirely new mindset for you. There’s also the matter of your mood in general. You had many terrible transformations when you were a student, but there were only three times when I genuinely believed that you were going to die. On all three occasions, you admitted that you were particularly upset about something.”

He didn’t need Madam Pomfrey to tell him when those three near-death experiences had occurred, although he knew for a fact that she kept volumes of records tucked away in a hidden corner of her office. The first had been at the beginning of his second year when he had suspected (correctly) that his roommates had found absolute proof that he was a werewolf. The second had been at the beginning of his fifth year just before his friends had completed the Animagus transformation. And the third had been the night that Sirius had told Severus how to get past the Whomping Willow. 

“Did something especially happy happen this month?” Madam Pomfrey continued. “Or relaxing?” 

“No,” said Remus, and this time he was being honest. He hadn’t been happy or relaxed. He’d been frantic with fear that Sirius was going to do something self-destructive.

“Think about it,” she said. “And do not teach your classes today. It’s Friday. Even if you’re feeling better than normal, you still need to take the weekend to rest. Your body was ripped apart and reassembled. It deserves time to recover.”

“He’ll rest,” promised Sirius. Madam Pomfrey appeared to determine that Sirius’ assurances were acceptable and took her leave.

Sirius sat down in the chair nearest Remus and eyed him speculatively. 

“I don’t know,” Remus said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

“An easy transformation? Those should always happen.”

“Not when you were so upset. I was upset that you were upset. I should have had a bad transformation, not a good one.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Sirius snapped. “We can’t both be ridiculous at once. We have to take it in turns, and it’s still my turn.”

Remus didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’m afraid I’m in over my head with you, Padfoot.”

“You’ve always been in over your head with me. That’s half the reason you like me so much.”

Remus didn’t have a retort for that. It might have been true.

Sirius sank back into a chair, looking rather more comfortable than he had for a long while. “Do you remember the night we were Sorted?”

“I don’t suppose that’s the kind of thing anyone forgets. Between Peter being a hatstall, half the Great Hall booing you for getting into Gryffindor, and the fact that I genuinely believed the hat was going to tell everyone that I was a werewolf—”

“Not the Sorting itself. After. We had a big class and there were more boys in Gryffindor than they wanted to put in one room. McGonagall was talking to Dumbledore about how she was going to divide us. The Headmaster himself, deciding who slept where. At the time I thought it was because of me, but in retrospect it must have been because of you.”

“I don’t remember this.” 

“You must not have been eavesdropping properly.”

“Of course.”

“She said she expected that she would regret her decision sooner rather than later, but that putting Potter and Black together would mitigate the damage in the short term so it was absolutely necessary.”

That didn’t surprise Remus. He remembered how most of the Gryffindor table had glowered at the meant-to-be-Slytherin in their midst. 

“Then she said that she wasn’t certain who else she wanted in the room with us. And since James and I were being discussed as if we weren’t shamelessly listening, we pointed at you. We said we wanted you.”

That, Remus remembered with a sudden thrill of fear. He hadn’t known why they were pointing. He had, of course, suspected that they were announcing to the room at large that he was a werewolf.

“I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was horrified. She didn’t want me sharing a room with you. It makes sense in retrospect. I wouldn’t put the closeted werewolf in with the heir to one of the most bigoted, judgmental families in wizarding Britain either. I ought to ask her what made her agree.”

“Perhaps she thought it would be too suspicious if she refused for no reason.” 

“Perhaps she just had a sense that it would be right.” It was a rather sentimental theory from a man who short hours before had suggested that Dumbledore was an evil mastermind and Harry was doomed. Remus would have to try one more time to bring the subject back to Sirius.

“You read the note I wrote you,” Remus began.  
  
“Res ipsa loquitur,” Sirius snapped. _The thing speaks for itself._ In other words, Sirius still didn’t want to discuss why he’d been so grief-stricken the night before, let alone how to improve the situation.

“May I ask you one thing?”

“No.”

“Any particular reason?”

“We don’t talk about things like that.”

“Why not?”

“We’re men and we’re English.”

“I’m half-Welsh.”

“I don’t think that changes the rule.”

“I’m certain that it does,” said Remus in his most professorial voice. “I’ve let this— I’ve let you— I haven’t paid enough attention to you for too long. After the way Halloween hit you, I should have done more to help you.”

“I quite agree.”

Remus was startled. He hadn’t expected Sirius to agree. He had expected Sirius to grant him every sort of reprieve, because that was what Sirius generally did with the people who were most important to him.

“Let’s see,” Sirius continued, ticking his points off on his fingers. “You forgave me for believing that you were a spy who betrayed our best friends and all of light magic. You forgave me when my belief that you were a spy led to our best friends’ deaths. You arranged everything so that I would have the best chance of being free after we found Wormtail, and you did it with every expectation that you would be publicly revealed as a werewolf in the process. The minute I was officially cleared by the Ministry, you opened your home to me. You gave me a wand. You fed me. You made hot chocolate for me. You gave me crossword puzzles. You researched the effects of dementors. You consulted with your father. You consulted with Félicité. You came looking for me at Halloween. You conspired with at least one of my cousins to make certain I was being watched. You arranged for me to come here once a month so you could take your turn watching me. You did all of this while handling a very demanding career— something I have never in my life even attempted to do— and while dealing with an illness that takes at least two days away from you every month. And when you were in the middle of one of those nasty and painful spells last night, you still let me cry on your shoulder.”

Oh. So Sirius had meant it facetiously. Normally Remus would have noticed. He was awfully tired. Madam Pomfrey was right. There was no need to push himself.

“It better not have been the tears that did it,” Sirius mused.

“The tears that did what?”

“Made your transformation so much easier. Tears have magical properties sometimes.”

“You’re not a phoenix, Padfoot,” said Remus, even as the unpleasant memory of the battle in the Department of Mysteries washed over him. Sirius Black meeting his ambiguous demise by passing through a ragged curtain… It couldn’t be allowed to stand. It was wrong.

Sirius didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.

* * *

Remus took the opportunity to excuse himself to visit his class. He was unsurprised to see that Mad-Eye had stuck to the scheduled lesson plan and the fifth-year Ravenclaws were following along intently. The students’ OWL exam was short months away, and many of them were well aware of the learning opportunities they had lost due to sub-par Defense professors. 

Mad-Eye pulled Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecomb to the front of the class and asked them to demonstrate various counter-jinxes. Both girls smiled at Remus as he sat in the back of the room and observed them. He smiled back; Mad-Eye took the opportunity of their distraction to disarm them both and remind them to be more vigilant. Cho nodded; Marietta looked rather put-out. 

* * *

He returned to his rooms to discover that Sirius had spread the chess set across the table. The chess set had been in the wardrobe when Remus had moved in; he had no idea to which doomed Defense professor it had originally belonged. 

They played sloppily. Remus’ post-transformation exhaustion was settling painfully over his body, and Sirius was no doubt still pondering whatever it was that had so affected him the day before.

“Tell me about Teddy,” said Sirius as he nudged his queen forward.

What little of Remus’ attention had been focused on the game vanished. In the two years that had passed since his death in the future-past, he had never been able to talk about Teddy with anyone. He ought to have had too many words to describe Teddy. Instead, he had none.

“Teddy was perfect,” he said at last.

“Tell me how.” Sirius was moving a pawn, now, and Remus couldn’t decide whether it was a trap or not. He also didn’t care.

“He was a Metamorphmagus.” 

“Really? Obviously, considering his mother it would be a possibility, but aren’t those meant to come along once in a century?”

“I was surprised. Andromeda and Dora weren’t. I think Andromeda was waiting for it. His hair was black when he was born, and within the hour it was ginger. Andromeda said that Dora’s hair started changing the day she was born, too. By the time I died— do you remember how James used to love to conjure circles of smoke to make Harry laugh?” He didn’t wait for Sirius to confirm that he remembered. He knew that Sirius remembered everything. “I would do that with Teddy, but every time I changed the color of the smoke, he’d change his hair to match. Turquoise, pink, golden, blue. I think he liked turquoise best— of course he was too young to express something like that, I just had a feeling…”

“Who did he look like? Other than the hair?”

“Dora.”

“Lucky.”

“I thought so. Of course, she insisted that he looked like me. She was going to see what she wanted to see and for whatever reason she liked the idea of him looking like me. Or perhaps she was just hallucinating from the pain when he was born and stuck to what she’d said because she liked to be stubborn.”

“The pain? Was she all right?”

Remus wondered, daily, whether it had ended up killing her. She hadn’t had access to proper medical treatment. She hadn’t healed by the final battle. He’d asked her not to come, he’d hoped she wouldn’t come… But he guessed that she had come. He guessed that she had fought even though her body wasn’t ready to fight. “We couldn’t exactly call a Healer to attend,” he said. “Andromeda did everything. Delivered the baby, made the potions. She was wonderful. Dora was getting better and better every day, those few days that we had. She loved Teddy. She loved being a mother. I think it surprised her how much she loved everything about it. She had so many plans. She wanted to live close to a primary school so Teddy wouldn’t be lonely before he started at Hogwarts. She wanted gnomes in the garden. She wanted a bedroom just for Harry so he’d know how much we meant it when we made him the godfather.”

Sirius’ eyes suddenly looked too bright. “You can make Harry the godfather again.”

“No. You’re right, this is a different reality, this is…”

This was a reality in which Teddy probably wouldn’t exist. The odds of a Metamorphmagus son being born to a Metamorphmagus mother were nothing compared to the odds of the correct sperm hitting the correct egg at the correct moment.

He pushed the thought out of his mind. Magic. Magic was unpredictable and incomprehensible even to those who were able to harness its power. The world had a way of righting itself. He hadn’t killed Teddy by trying to save Voldemort’s victims. He hadn’t.

He hadn’t.

Sirius was right. It was Sirius’ turn to panic.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” said Sirius.

Sirius said that he was going to meet Teddy, and Sirius was far smarter than Remus. Remus was not going to contemplate whether he had killed Teddy by playing with the very fabric of time.

For the first time, Remus focused on the chessboard in front of him. “Check.”

Sirius stared. “Oh. Right.” They both calculated the next few moves they would make. Sirius was done for. Sirius was less than interested in that fact. “I want to do better with both of them. Harry and Teddy.”

Remus knew the feeling. “What can I do to help?”

“Get Félicité up here. Get her to finish what she started yesterday, if she can.” 

_**To be continued.** _


	40. Sirius, Processing 2

**Processing 2**

Félicité returned with Remus far more quickly than Sirius would have expected.

“I was concerned about you,” she told Sirius. “I’m glad that you sought out your friend, and I’m certainly glad that you’re willing to try again.”

Sirius didn’t know what to say to that. He had been absolutely convinced that his previous session with Félicité had been his final session with Félicité. He wasn’t even certain what had changed his mind. Something to do with Remus talking about Teddy and Harry, he supposed.

“Do you want Remus to stay for this session?” Félicité asked.

“No,” said Sirius hastily. “Remus has been working too hard today and should go have a sleep,” he added to soften his answer. It was true, too. Remus hadn’t pushed himself beyond all reason, but he hadn’t rested the way he was meant to, either.

Remus didn’t argue. He bid farewell to Félicité and vanished into his private rooms. The door clicked shut behind him, and Sirius felt an irrational burst of fear. Now there was no escape. The password to the locked door was _pink hair,_ and he knew it, but years with dementors had taught him that memory was a fickle thing. Perhaps if he willingly dove into the memories the dementors had used and twisted, he would forget everything else. 

“Are you ready to go back to where we were?” 

“I am,” said Sirius. He wasn’t going to derail this meeting now that it had begun.

Félicité conjured the ball of light. “Make it red,” said Sirius before she could ask. 

“Your house when you were a student here was the red one, correct?” she asked. 

“Yes. Gryffindor.” He didn’t know if that was why he had chosen the color. He didn’t care. The ball of light began to bounce back and forth between his hands, buzzing them lightly. It felt, he observed for the first time, the tiniest bit like a Snitch. He remembered Harry sitting in this very chair twelve hours before, playing with one of the Snitches Sirius had bought him for his fourteenth birthday. He smiled.

“Picture a negative image in your mind," she directed, as she always did. "Picture the image the dementors showed you the most often."

_James and Lily, lying dead._

"How disturbing is the image on a scale of one to ten?" she asked.

"Ten." 

“This is the same image you used yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Is it more or less disturbing than yesterday?”

There was no more or less. There was only the moment when he realized that he, in his breathtaking arrogance, had killed his best friend and orphaned his godson. Forever and always, that was what had happened. Harry had forgiven him. Remus had forgiven him. That changed nothing. “I don’t know,” he told her.

"Think of everything about the memory. What do you see?"

He saw everything, more than he had seen the day before.

J _ames' glasses were askew where he lay in the front room. His eyes stared unseeingly. His face was both too stiff and too slack, and his skin was the wrong color in a way Sirius couldn’t quite describe._

_James had an expression of surprise on his face. Sirius knew that that expression always came with Avada Kedavra, but it was easy to think that that was how James would have looked anyway. He hadn’t suspected Peter— he considered it the height of dishonor to mistrust any of his friends. He hadn’t even been carrying his wand. He had obviously charged at Voldemort without his wand in the hopes that Lily would be able to take Harry and escape._

_One wall had collapsed. The room was coated with glass, the result of photographs exploding out of their frames. Sirius had seen all of the photographs before in happier times and would see them again in the future: James and Lily’s wedding. James and his friends in their Hogwarts robes. Lily and her friends in their Hogwarts robes. Harry eating; Harry getting a bath in the sink; Harry hugging a toy lion; Harry flying on a toy broom; Harry sleeping; Harry laughing._

_Books, too, were scattered the length of the house. When you were trapped inside, hiding from a psychotic megalomaniac, you had to pass the time somehow. There were magical books and Muggle books. There was fiction and non-fiction. There were old textbooks and comic books. Their pages had been ripped from their spines._

_Dishes and cooking pots and lamps and vases received as wedding presents, too, lay broken._

_Worst of all was the toy broomstick Sirius had given Harry for his first birthday. One half lay in the front room near James; the other half was in Harry’s nursery. Sirius couldn’t tell where it had been when Voldemort had attacked._

_Lily lay dead in the nursery. Even in the dark night, her hair was beautifully red, though tangled with debris. While James lay where he had fallen, someone had moved Lily’s corpse. She had been arranged to lie peacefully in the ruins. Someone had taken pains to shut her brilliant green eyes._

_Harry’s crib was empty. Hagrid had beaten Sirius to the house, and now Hagrid towered over Sirius with Harry safe in his arms. Hagrid was crying. Lines of grief crossed his face, and Sirius could see pity there, too. Pity directed at Sirius, who everyone knew had loved James Potter like a brother._

_(He’d loved James better than he’d ever managed to love his brother-by-birth.)_

_Just beside them, Sirius’ motorcycle sat idle. There had been days when that motorcycle had meant more to Sirius than anything in the world. Now it was a thing, an object, a toy that would never bring happiness again._

_All around them was a cloud of dust and ash._

_The sky was dull and grey overhead. Sirius couldn’t see any stars. He couldn’t even see the moon. It was right, he decided. The stars meant family. The moon meant friends. Sirius no longer had either._

"What do you smell?"

He smelled everything right away, too.

_The smoke and dust coated his throat, and he was grateful. The smoke and dust blocked out the scents of the Potters’ normal life: milk and baby powder, cat fur and cat food, citrus shampoo and spicy cologne, roast beef and potatoes. The smoke and dust blocked out the scents of death and battle: blood, urine, burning flesh._

"What are you touching?"

_His wand was in his hand. Hagrid’s hand was on his shoulder. The cat wound through his ankles. The ground was crumbling beneath their feet. The October air was cold against his back but hot on his face as heat washed up from the ruins of the house._

_He was shaking. Hagrid’s hand tightened on his shoulder. Hagrid was the only thing keeping him from falling to his knees._

"What do you taste?"

_Dust and ash. Every mouthful was worse. Every breath took him further away from a world with James and Lily in it._

"What do you hear?"

_Harry was crying, but Hagrid was there, trying to comfort both of them._

_“It’s a miracle, though, Harry’s alive, great slash across his forehead an’ all. Lily an’ James… we all loved Lily an’ James, I remember yeh were the bes’ man at their wedding. It’s a tragedy, they were good people, good a witch an’ wizard as there ever was, but better people. We’ll all miss them, bu’ we have their son. We have Harry. We’ll tell Harry about his parents, he’ll know how much we loved them and they loved him…”_

And Sirius had started to argue that he was Harry’s godfather and he would take Harry. Hagrid wasn’t having it. Hagrid had his orders from Dumbledore. 

Of course Hagrid had his orders from Dumbledore.

Dumbledore had believed that Sirius was the Secret-Keeper. Everyone had believed that Sirius was the Secret-Keeper, because Sirius had done everything short of shouting it from the rooftops. That had been the whole plan.

No wonder Dumbledore had wanted to keep Harry away from Sirius even before Sirius had been arrested for the deaths of the Muggles Peter had killed. Dumbledore thought that Sirius had betrayed Lily and James, because Sirius had done everything but affix a sign reading “I betrayed the Potters” to his robes with his mother’s best permanent sticking charm.

No wonder Dumbledore had wanted to take Harry away from the magical world that night. Madness swirled through the autumn air. Voldemort was banished, but his followers were not. A few days after Sirius’ arrest, his cousin Bella and her footsoldiers had tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom into insanity in front of their son who was just Harry’s age.

Sirius still disagreed with Dumbledore— oh, how Sirius still disagreed with Dumbledore— but he would grant that Dumbledore had done the right thing on that night with the knowledge at hand.

The last thing Sirius heard was his own voice, hollow and ominous. 

_“Take the motorcycle, Hagrid. I won’t need it anymore.”_

Then he was out of Godric’s Hollow and in Moony’s office at Hogwarts, sitting next to Félicité Palomer. 

He was shaking again, shaking the way he had been in Godric’s Hollow when Hagrid had held him up.

He wondered if Félicité’s small student Marianne had ever felt as if she were in two times at once when Félicité had treated her.

He wondered if Moony ever felt as if he was in two times at once when he did something the same way he’d done it before his death.

He wondered if he wasn’t quite as unique in his experience as he’d thought he must have been.

"On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?” asked Félicité. 

“Five,” he said. He was shaking so hard he couldn’t have held a wand, but something had changed. He hadn’t betrayed the Potters. He wasn’t betraying the Potters.

“You’re shaking,” said Félicité, as if he didn’t know. He wondered whether she was qualified for her position, after all, if that was how far her powers of observation extended. 

“I was shaking that night,” he told her. 

“Can you calm your body down now?”

“I could,” said Sirius. “But I don’t want to.” Somehow, he knew that the shaking would end when it ended. 

“Why don’t you want to?”

“I want to feel it. I spent most of twelve years turning myself into a dog when I felt too much. But I’m not a dog.”

Not for the first time, he remembered what he’d said to Wormtail when they’d come face-to-face in the Shrieking Shack the year before: _If you made a better rat than a human, Peter, that isn’t much to brag about!_

“I didn’t mean that you should stop the shaking by transforming. I meant that you should—”

Sirius grew bored with her directions and made himself stop shaking. He made his face expressionless, too. He’d learned as a child. It was the most useful thing his parents had ever taught him.

As he’d done the day before, he maneuvered Félicité into looking at his eyes instead of into them.

“You meant that I should do this,” he suggested.

“I’m not entirely sure what you just did, but I don’t think that’s what I was asking you to do, no.”

“You’re very particular,” Sirius told her. “Let’s do another set.”

She asked him the same questions. What did he see? What did he feel? What did he smell? What did he taste? What did he hear?

His answers were the same. 

He was there, and yet he was gone. It was real, and yet it was not. 

It was more memory than reality, and he hadn’t realized until that moment that his memory hadn’t really been a memory.

"On a scale of one to ten, how distressing is the memory?” asked Félicité. 

“One,” he said. It was distressing, but it was only a memory, and that made all the difference.

He wasn’t shaking this time. Félicité had the grace not to point it out. Instead, she told him that he needed to consider how he had felt about himself in the memory (he’d loathed himself for his role in Lily and James’ deaths) and how he felt about himself now.

He thought, again, of how Harry had sat in this very chair and played with a Snitch and bragged about how well he’d done in Moony’s class.

_I’m Harry’s godfather. I know enough not to let him go this time._

“Focus on that thought,” she told him, somehow knowing that he’d found it before he told her. “Focus on it until the light stops moving.”

He did.

It was easy.

And it wasn’t a further betrayal of James, because James was the one who had wanted him to be Harry’s godfather in the first place.

When the light stopped, he looked at Félicité and she was smiling. He smiled back.

“Is this a good place to stop?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What will you do if that memory comes back to you in the next few days?”

He bit his tongue to keep from telling her that he would buy a case of firewhiskey. He knew that she would not be impressed with that answer. “I’ll visit Remus or my cousin,” he said. “Or I’ll do a crossword puzzle.”

She eyed him speculatively. “Do you really do crossword puzzles?”

“Devastatingly handsome Azkaban escapees can’t enjoy crossword puzzles?”

“It would not have been my first guess.”

“Ask Remus if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you.” She stood up and gathered her things. He stood up, too. He had expected to want to escape to Remus’ private rooms— Remus was definitely asleep, and so there would be no one to ask him annoying questions— but now he realized that he had other places to be.

“I’ll walk you back to your _carrosse_ ,” he told her. “I need to stop in and see Hagrid.”

* * *

Hagrid’s hut glowed with a warm light, but Sirius didn’t precisely find it inviting. He wasn’t certain what he thought, but he had decided that he was going to speak to Hagrid, and so he was going to speak to Hagrid.

He knocked at the door and Hagrid flung it open immediately. Hagrid was so big, and the hut so small… but not smaller than a cell in Azkaban, Sirius reflected.

“Is Harry all righ’?” Hagrid asked. 

Sirius nodded. “He’s fine. May I come in?”

Hagrid ushered him inside. The boarhound, Fang, wagged his tail and Sirius gave real consideration to turning into a dog himself and having a conversation with Fang instead of Hagrid.

Sirius tore his eyes away from Fang and looked up at Hagrid. Sirius never had to look up at anyone.

“I came to say thank you,” he said. There. It was done.

Hagrid’s enormous brow crinkled in confusion. “Thank me? Fer what?”

“For your kindness the night that Harry’s parents died.”

“That? Yeh shouldn’ be thankin’ me fer that.”

“James Potter was my best friend. He was the best friend I ever had or will ever have. His parents treated me almost as a second son after I ran away from my own family. He and Lily made me Harry’s godfather. I repaid them by convincing them to allow Peter Pettigrew to be their Secret-Keeper, and that led to their deaths.”

“Sirius. Yeh couldn’ have known…”

“I didn’t need to know. All I needed to do was be the Secret-Keeper myself. I knew my own mind even if I couldn’t know my supposed friends’ minds.” Hagrid opened his mouth to object, and Sirius held up a hand to silence him. “When I saw the ruins of their house and realized what I’d done, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t have comforted Harry even if you’d let me. You took care of Harry and you tried to take care of me. When you put your hand on my shoulder and told me that we still had Harry and that we would tell him that we loved Lily and James and that Lily and James loved him, that was the last kind thing anyone did for me for thirteen years.”

That was all it took for Hagrid burst into sobs. “Yeh shouldn’ be thanking me fer that!” he repeated. Tears glistened on his beetle-black beard. “I shoulda known that yeh would never have… yeh would never have done wha’ they said yeh did.”

Hagrid had said the same things during the summer when Sirius had repossessed his motorcycle. At the time, Sirius had been frustrated with Hagrid’s reaction and desperate to touch something that had been his before his life had imploded. Now he wondered if he had been wrong. “Do you want the motorcycle back?” he asked. “You took care of it all these years… it’s more yours than mine now…”

Hagrid was startled into breaking off his sobs. “That motorbike is yours! Yeh always loved that motorbike.”

“Not like I loved them,” said Sirius. He pictured the scene again: James’ body lying broken in the front room, the motorcycle behind Sirius in the street. He’d thought they were both lost to him forever. If he was going to get one of them back, it ought to have been James.

“Blimey! O’ course not! It’s a thing, not a person. Yeh shouldn’ love a thing more than a person, but yeh’re allowed to be a bit silly about a thing. An’ you was always a bit silly ‘bout that motorbike.”

Sirius bowed his head and blinked rapidly. “You’re very wise, Hagrid. Dumbledore is lucky to have you here.”

“Great man, Dumbledore,” said Hagrid reflexively. 

(Finding the correct compliment to abruptly end a conversation was one of Sirius’ many underutilized talents.)

He declined Hagrid’s offer to stay for a cuppa and set off across the grounds toward the Whomping Willow. He needed to get home, but first he needed to say goodnight to Harry. He ordinarily let Harry be the one to initiate contact by the mirrors— after all, he never knew what Harry might be doing that he wouldn’t want interrupted by his godfather—but the night felt raw and special.

He pulled the mirror from his pocket. “Harry? Harry Potter?”

But the round face that looked back at him wasn’t Harry’s. It was a face he knew, though, although he’d known it on a woman, not a boy. “You must be Neville Longbottom.”

“And you must be Sirius Black,” the boy said.

They studied each other for a few seconds. Sirius politely refrained from telling Neville how much he resembled his mother Alice, and Neville politely refrained from telling Sirius how much he resembled his cousin Bellatrix.

The boy had a nervousness about him that made Sirius sad. He doubted that it would have been there if Frank and Alice had been able to raise him. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t been in the room when Bella tortured Frank and Alice until they were left as bodies without minds…

Sirius had no doubt that Bellatrix would have sought out the last Potter instead of the Longbottoms if it had been at all possible in that short chaotic moment. He would never forgive Dumbledore for where he had put Harry, but he would never cease to be grateful that Dumbledore had put Harry _somewhere_.

“Harry left this mirror on his bed,” said Neville hesitantly. “I heard a voice calling for him and I didn’t know if he was in trouble or it was important, so I picked it up—”

“Quite understandable,” said Sirius. “Do you know where Harry is?”

“Almost everyone is down in the Common Room. They’re having a party.”

“You don’t like parties?” he asked Neville.

“I’m… not in the mood.”

Sirius wasn’t sure what to say to that. He, personally, wouldn’t have wanted to go to a party tonight either. On the other hand, he couldn’t help but think of how much simpler life had been when he had lived in the Gryffindor dorms and helped throw Friday night parties. (James had always been the life of them. God, he missed James.)

“Would you do me a favor and brave the party for long enough to see if Harry will check in with me?”

Neville agreed, and disappeared almost before Sirius could thank him.

* * *

A long moment later, the mirror sprang back to life with Harry’s reflection. “Sirius? What’s wrong?” His voice cracked and Sirius felt terrible for trying to contact Harry at all. So far tonight he’d rousted Frank and Alice’s orphan from his solitary sulking and frightened James and Lily’s orphan. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he corrected hastily. “I wanted to say goodnight to you, is all.”

Harry didn’t even pretend to believe that. “What’s going on?” He squinted at Sirius. “You never left Hogwarts, did you? You’re outside near the Whomping Willow!” Harry dropped the mirror onto the bed and Sirius could hear him rustling through his trunk— no doubt fetching the invisibility cloak. “I’ll be out there in a minute.”

“Harry, stay inside!” Sirius scolded. “It’s past curfew.”

Harry snorted. “Lot of nerve you have saying that, you broke curfew so many times you wrote a whole map about it. At least I’m not running around with a werewolf who hasn’t had his potions.”

And the mirror went blank. 

Sirius was an expert in the peculiar process of looking for someone who was invisible. He knew the obvious signs: disturbances in the grass (less useful when the ground was frozen), flashes of visibility when the wind blew (though tonight was still) and birds suddenly changing their flight paths (there were none about at the moment). He also knew the less obvious signs: the displacement of air that you could easily convince yourself was the product of your imagination, the almost inaudible sound of trainers on earth, the general feeling of not being alone.

“Hello, Harry,” he said.

“How did you know I was here?”

“You did tell me you were coming.” 

“But you knew when I got here.”

“I was listening for your footsteps,” said Sirius, because explaining the rest was useless.

“Is there a way to spell trainers to be quieter?” Harry sat down beside him a safe distance from the willow.

“Yes, but I don’t think it would make very much difference. I knew what to listen for. Most people don’t.” He drank in the sight of Harry fondly. 

_“It’s a miracle, though, Harry’s alive, great slash across his forehead an’ all. Lily an’ James… we all loved Lily an’ James, I remember yeh were the bes’ man at their wedding. It’s a tragedy, they were good people, good a witch an’ wizard as there ever was, but better people. We’ll all miss them, bu’ we have their son. We have Harry. We’ll tell Harry about his parents, he’ll know how much we loved them and they loved him…”_

“What?” asked Harry, apparently having decided that Sirius had stared at him for long enough.

“Your parents loved you, you know.”

Harry shrugged. “I know.”

“I know your aunt and uncle didn’t exactly tell you about them when you were growing up.”

“But you told me last summer. You showed me. All those memories you and Professor Lupin put in the Pensieve…”

Sirius had almost forgotten that they’d done that. Perhaps they were all doing better than he’d feared.

“Why did you use the mirror, Sirius?” Harry asked. “And don’t lie to me. You’re the only adult who doesn’t lie to me all the time.”

“I told you the truth. I wanted to say goodnight to you.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed. “I spoke to Hagrid today about the night your parents died. You lost the most that night, but we all lost so much. I was feeling grateful that we didn’t lose you. That’s all.”

Harry nodded, seeming to find that explanation acceptable. Of course, he ought to have found it acceptable— it was, after all, the truth. 

“I didn’t mean to worry you or roust Neville out of whatever he was doing.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

“What about Neville? Is he all right?”

“I guess he’s fine.” The lack of concern seemed uncharacteristic for Harry, who was always able to tell Sirius the most minute details of Ron and Hermione’s lives.

“You and he don’t get along?”

“No, we do. He’s…” Harry didn’t seem to have words to describe Neville Longbottom.

“If I’d raised you, we would have had Neville round to visit twice a week,” Sirius said. “Of course, I would have stopped if you’d asked.” He liked to think that he would have, anyway. He hadn’t appreciated the experience of being raised by people who wanted to choose his friends for him.

“That wouldn’t have been bad,” Harry mused. “He would have been better company than Dudley. But why Neville? Out of everyone?”

“I knew Neville’s parents quite well. On Christmas, Remus and I mentioned to you that during the first war against Voldemort, there was a secret organization called the Order of the Phoenix. Neville’s parents were both members. Both Aurors, in fact, and good ones.”

At first, Harry didn’t bother to hide his surprise, and Sirius remembered Remus’ intimation that Neville was one of the poorest students in his year. As Sirius watched, Harry’s shock turned to careful thoughtfulness. “Neville’s never mentioned his parents. Did Voldemort kill them?”

“No. A few days after Voldemort killed your parents, a group of his followers— led by my cousin Bellatrix— tortured Frank and Alice with the Cruciatus Curse. Their bodies could be fixed but their minds could not. They never recovered enough to recognize Neville, let alone care for him. They live in Saint Mungo’s long-term care ward. Obviously, this is Neville’s story to tell, and if he’s chosen not to share it with you—”

“I had no idea,” said Harry hollowly. “That’s— that’s worse than what happened to my mum and dad.”

“I quite agree,” said Sirius. He draped his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “I promise I didn’t ask to talk to you so I could send you into your weekend with a sad story.

“I’ll be nicer to him,” Harry decided.

“Have you ever failed to be nice to him?”

Harry seemed to consider that. “Not really, but I could do better.”

Beside them, the Whomping Willow swung a branch at a bird that had flown too close. “I, for the record, failed to be nice quite often when I was in school. I think the term _arrogant little berk_ would have been appropriate.”

Harry laughed. It was Sirius’ favorite sound in the world. When nothing else felt right, Harry somehow did. Sirius got to his feet and held his hand out to Harry. 

“I don’t want to keep you away from the party any longer. It’s too cold for you to be outside anyway.”

Harry protested weakly but allowed himself to be sent back to the castle, lured no doubt by the prospect of a warm fire and purloined butterbeer.

Sirius waited to see that Harry really did re-enter the castle before he began the walk to Hogsmeade. As he exited the school grounds, he glanced up and noticed that the sky was perfectly clear— a complete contrast to the night Lily and James had died. This time, Sirius could see the moon and the stars. The moon was his friends and the stars were his family and for an instant they looked like expertly fitted parts of a whole.

  
_**To be continued.** _


	41. The Guest Lecture

There were six weeks left before the final task, and Harry and Cedric were suddenly more interested in the fact that their Quidditch pitch had been defiled than in preparing for the final task. 

The other students, too, seemed to have collectively lost their educational momentum. With the exception of the panic-stricken fifth years and seventh years who were overwhelmed by the prospect of OWLs and NEWTs, no one seemed particularly interested in anything. Even the Imperius lessons had grown stale, not least because most of the students who were capable of learning to resist it at this point in their lives had already done so. 

If the only true purpose of the Aurors visiting Hogwarts had been to supervise his classes, he would have sent them home. That not being an option, however, he decided to take a cue from Mad-Eye and use his Auror supervisors as a distraction.

“One student will win twenty-five points for his or her House at the end of this lesson,” he announced nonchalantly to the rowdy sixth years.

Thirty backs straightened. Thirty sets of hands went to wands and quills. Thirty pairs of eyes were suddenly fixed on him. 

Sometimes he hated the way the students in the mixed-House classes separated themselves into groups and barely acknowledged one another except to taunt and gloat. 

Sometimes he loved to have the option of harnessing their competitive pride.

“Our resident Auror, Miss Tonks, will be giving you a lecture today.”

Dora raised her hand, brushing aside her tomato-red hair as she did so. (Today, she looked almost like Fred and George’s triplet.) “Professor?” she asked politely.

The class tittered. They had learned in recent months that something interesting always followed when Dora addressed Remus this way.

“Yes, Miss Tonks?” he asked just as politely.

“You didn’t tell me that you wanted me to lecture the students today.”

“That’s right, I didn’t,” he replied. He returned his attention to the students, who were now leaning forward in their seats in anticipation. (He loved teaching. He was going to be sorry when this ended. Leaving Hogwarts in disgrace, having been outed as a werewolf, would be orders of magnitude worse this time than it had been the first time.)

“As she has had no time to prepare, Miss Tonks’ lecture will be about nothing in particular. You will have trouble working out what will be on the quiz at the end of the lesson. Therefore, I suggest that you take copious notes, to which you will be permitted to refer during the quiz. The student with the highest score will win the twenty-five points, with one exception.”

He paused dramatically.

“Are you going to make us ask what the exception is?” demanded Lee Jordan.

“Yes, Lee, I am, thank you. Now that you have asked so ably, I shall advise you that any student who succumbs to the Imperius Curse during the course of Miss Tonks’ lesson will be disqualified. I will be placing the curse on each of you in turn without warning.”

Dora cackled with glee. “This is excellent!” she announced. Then she sobered. “However, the Imperius Curse is still to be taken seriously, which is why it is important for you to attempt to block it while your attention is elsewhere.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Remus agreed. He set a self-writing quill to transcribe Dora’s lesson and nodded to her. “Begin.”

“My father is Muggle-born, and my parents sent me to a Muggle primary school for a few years after You-Know-Who fell and before I started here at Hogwarts,” Dora began. “They used to set essays for us that weren’t like the essays here. We’d have to write about what we did with our families or what we would do if we were suddenly rich. I always had trouble because I had to be careful not to write about the wizarding world. One day I couldn’t think of anything to write that wouldn’t violate the Statute of Secrecy. Miss Abrahams stood over me and told me that I had to start moving my pencil— that’s a Muggle quill— even if all I did was write over and over that I didn’t know what to write. She said that if I wrote about how I didn’t know what to write, I would suddenly know what to write.”

Remus cast the spell on Kenneth Towler, who immediately stood and picked up a piece of chalk. _I am eliminated from the competition,_ he wrote on the board for all to see. 

The other students gasped. Kenneth swore when Remus released the curse and directed him to sit beneath the window. “You are free to do whatever you’d like for the rest of the lesson as long as you do it quietly and do not distract your classmates,” Remus told him, hoping that this would take the edge off any embarrassment that came from being the first to be eliminated. Kenneth nodded, and Remus was pleased to see that he chose to watch his classmates rather than amuse himself until the game ended. 

Dora continued to speak, and the self-writing quill continued to transcribe her. “That’s what I’m doing today. Since your professor didn’t see fit to warn me that I was going to have to lecture, I’ll just tell you over and over again that I don’t know what to talk about. Do you reckon that he surprised me with this because he thinks I never shut up, so I wouldn’t have any trouble? Don’t answer that. I’m meant to be an authority figure and not address you as my peers, even though I remember sitting in the Great Hall and watching every one of you get Sorted when I was a student myself.”

Remus cast the spell on Adrian Pucey. Adrian was one of the weakest students in the class; at least Kenneth wouldn’t be alone beneath the window for long. 

Adrian rose and, in his turn, picked up the chalk. _I am also eliminated from the competition,_ he wrote. When Remus released the curse, Adrian didn’t look surprised. He merely took the seat beside Kenneth and began frantically revising for a potions exam. Remus half-wondered if Adrian had let himself be eliminated deliberately.

“I remember teaching some of you Hufflepuffs how to open the door to our common room,” Dora was saying. “It was the prefects’ job. I don’t know where they were. I just know that I was never allowed to be a prefect because, as my Head of House said, I lacked certain necessary qualities, such as the ability to behave myself.”

The students laughed. Remus turned his wand to Patricia Stimpson. She picked up the chalk and wrote _Professor: 3. Students: 0._ When she realized what she had done, she looked as if she might burst into tears, and Remus remembered anew, as if he had ever forgotten, how truly loathsome this curse was.

“We did not have any good Defense Against the Dark Arts professors then, if you were wondering, so I hope you’re all glad to have Professor Lupin even if he does do annoying things like tell someone to lecture thirty seconds before she’s meant to begin. To be fair, some of our Defense professors were able to teach us things, but those always seemed to be the ones who wound up trying to kill the students or something. Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

Remus directed his attention to Roger Davies.

 _Stand up,_ he told Roger.

Roger’s desk shook, and his quill fell to the floor. But Roger didn’t stand. The connection between them snapped, and Roger looked at Remus with a mixture of triumph and confusion. (It was rather the same expression he had worn when he’d found himself escorting Fleur to the Yule Ball.)

“Excellent, Roger,” Remus complimented. Roger’s face relaxed into a smile, and the other Ravenclaws burst into a brief round of applause.

“Excellent, Roger,” Dora agreed, echoing Remus. “However, next time you see your brother Chester, tell him I do not forgive him for that time he reported me to Professor Flitwick over that little misunderstanding during the Frog Choir practice. I suppose Chester is still with the Improper Use of Magic Office? Now, my first prefect when I started school, she would have been in Chester’s year, her name was Jane Court. She ended up in Azkaban and no one ever found out why.” 

Remus aimed his wand at Fred Weasley as subtlety as he could, but Fred was ready. He didn’t move a muscle when Remus whispered “ _Imperio_!” Instead, he stared insolently at Remus.

“Congratulations, Fred,” said Remus, and it was the Gryffindors’ turn to cheer.

Dora barely paused in her monologue to acknowledge Fred. “Since you’re getting my life story, I imagine you’ll want to know about Auror training. You’re learning about it anyway, because this lesson is exactly the sort of thing you do when you’re first accepted into the program. I couldn’t take two steps without Mad-Eye Moody throwing some kind of curse at me that first year. He still does, sometimes.”

Cassius Warrington threw off the curse almost as easily as Fred had. The Slytherin students cheered. Remus and Dora praised. Cassius glowered at them all. 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Dora continued. “Mad-Eye is my idol and I want to be just like him except with fewer missing body parts. Although he lost that chunk of his nose fighting Evan Rosier, and he wouldn’t change anything except maybe to have brought Rosier in alive. Mad-Eye always brought the dark wizards he chased in alive if he possibly could, but Rosier was determined to fight to the death.”

Remus flicked his wand at Angelina Johnson. She had been the first of this class to break the curse, but she was apparently distracted by Dora’s recitation of Mad-Eye’s history (which was rather distracting) and she allowed Remus to force her to pick up the chalk. By the time she realized what was going on, it was too late. She broke the curse only to see the words written in her own handwriting: 

_Professor 4, Students 3._

She stalked to a seat beneath the windows with a furious glower on her face.

“Would you prefer that we switched to a lighter topic?” Dora asked the students rhetorically. Twenty-three students remained to be tested. This was Remus’ largest class. Ordinarily, he was pleased that so many of the students he had taught in their OWL year had chosen to continue with the subject. Today he felt mildly ill when he considered how many more times he would have to cast a horrendous curse.

He didn’t know whether he wanted to hear Dora tell silly stories or not.

The self-writing quill suffered no such ambivalence. It scratched on. The students’ quills did likewise.

“Why do werewolves run in circles?” asked Dora. She grinned radiantly. “Because it’s too hard to run in squares.”

Remus remembered the first time she’d tried to ply him with that stupid joke. It had been Christmas night, and she’d just kissed him…

He forced the thought out of his mind and refocused on Alicia Spinnet. She threw off the curse immediately. Remus nodded to her and she smiled happily. Angelina gave her a reluctant thumbs-up from across the room. 

“Where does the Muggle queen keep her armies?” asked Dora. “In her sleevies!”

One or two of the students laughed. The rest looked confused. Remus knew the feeling. 

“Why did the algae and the fungus get married? Because they had a lichen for one another!”

Remus cast in the direction of George Weasley. George did almost as well as his twin. Remus had barely touched his mind at all, which was good, he didn’t want to focus too long on George and remember the severed ear, the blood soaking them both…

“What’s brown and sticky? A stick! How many eggs should you use per omelette? Well, in France, one egg is enoeuf. Why did the little boy sleep on the chandelier? Because he was a light sleeper. How do crazy people go through the forest? They take the psycho path.”

“I ought to curse _you_ for some of those,” Remus told Dora.

“Try me any time, Professor,” said Dora, and he almost ended the class right there.

Dora winked at him.

He hoped that all of the students’ heads were down, and he quickly whispered “ _Imperio_!” and sent Lee Jordan to join Angelina and the others beneath the window.

Dora resumed her lecture. “What’s a mouse’s favorite game? Hide and squeak. Why are rivers always rich? Because they have two banks. What’s the purpose of reindeer? It makes the grass grow, sweetie. Where do you find giant snails? On the ends of giants’ fingers.”

Cedric was next. Like Roger, he nearly stood, but broke the curse just in time. The Hufflepuffs broke into the most raucous round of applause yet. Cedric was their champion, always.

There seemed to be no end to Dora’s repertoire of jokes. She didn’t exhaust them until Remus had tested all of the students. Exactly half of the class remained eligible to take the quiz. Remus picked up the lengthy scroll of parchment and offered the students five questions:

_What did Miss Tonks’ primary school teacher tell her about writing essays?_   
_Why did Roger’s brother Chester report Miss Tonks to Professor Flitwick when she was a student?_   
_How did Alastor Moody lose a piece of his nose?_   
_What’s brown and sticky?_   
_Where do you find giant snails?_

It was George Weasley who answered all of the questions correctly, and he proudly accepted his twenty-five points for Gryffindor as the class stormed out of the room chatting excitedly.

“It’s quite wonderful how much all of the students have learned this year,” said Dora, casually conjuring a glass and filling it with water from her wand. Her voice was cracking from speaking for so long, but she looked flushed and happy.

“It would be even more wonderful if they were more interested in continuing to learn,” said Remus ruefully.

Dora laughed. “It’s nearly Easter. They’re ready for a holiday, is all. I could do with one myself. Speaking of that, can you escape from your professorial duties on Tuesday evening?”

Without knowing why, he was tempted to claim that he couldn’t. His heart pounded as he made a conscious effort to steady his voice. “I imagine I could. Why?”

“My friends Tulip and Penny and I haven’t had a night off at the same time since November and we wanted to go watch Muggles brew beer. If you came, they could meet you.”

He’d been right to be worried, then. He’d look like an elderly father chaperoning his teenage daughter and her friends on a school trip. He supposed that he’d be able to handle Tulip and Penny’s disgusted expressions and whispers that Tonks must have lost her mind, but it was not going to be a pleasant experience.

He knew that he ought to be grateful that Dora hadn’t suggested dancing at a nightclub or drunken debauchery at a nude beach, but the prospect was still terrifying. Dora’s friends might not convince Dora to find a romantic partner of her own age and station, but what if they disliked him so strongly that it ruined their friendship with Dora? Dora had always claimed that her closest friends were extremely clever— what if one of them uncovered his lycanthropy and exposed him publicly in the hopes of bringing Dora to her senses? 

Tulip, Dora had told him, had been raised by Ministry workers so law-abiding that they hadn’t allowed their daughter to visit Dora in the summer because Dora had relatives in Azkaban. Mightn’t Tulip have a finely honed ability to sense rule-breaking?

Meanwhile, Dora had always praised Penny for her ability to make friends with anyone… other than bullies. The extent to which Remus had turned a blind eye to his school friends’ activities would almost certainly place him in the small category of people Penny did not like.

That said, he could hardly refuse Dora this normal rite of passage— allowing her friends to inspect the new man in her life. The first time he had met Dora, he had made their romance unconscionably difficult for her. He had promised that he would do better this time. “Of course,” he lied. “It sounds like fun.”

Dora burst out laughing. “You’re a terrible liar,” she said. “Is it that you don’t want to learn how Muggles make beer, or that you’re afraid of my friends?”

“Your friends do sound rather intimidating,” said Remus, and that made her laugh again. “And I can hardly turn this around on you and ask you to meet my oldest friend who spent twelve years in Azkaban, because he just so happens to be your cousin, and therefore not remotely frightening to you.” 

Dora sighed. “You sound just like Ayberk did when he first met me. He’s Tulip’s fiancé. He’ll be there, too. You can commiserate with him.”

“Unless Ayberk is twice Tulip’s age—”

“You’re not twice my age—”

“And is secretly a werewolf—”

“His name does mean ‘high moon’ in Turkish—”

“I doubt his being held up to you for approval was remotely comparable to this.”

“You’re not being held up for approval!”

Remus raised an eyebrow.

“All right, you are,” Dora admitted. “But they already like you from what I’ve told them about you. And even if they don’t like you, it doesn’t matter. Tulip would have gotten engaged to Ayberk even if I’d told her that I didn’t approve of her marrying a man who went to Durmstrang when he could have gone to Hogwarts.”

A Durmstrang alumnus? That was unexpected. “How did that happen?” 

“He was very good friends with his cousin who lived in Turkey. He wanted to go to school with his cousin, and Durmstrang allowed it even though he was down in the Hogwarts book.” 

“I knew a number of British families who threatened to send their children to Durmstrang—”

“You mean, like my family?”

“Yes. But I never heard of a British student actually attending.”

“He’s never heard of anyone else doing it, either. You can talk to him about it when you meet him. Oh, he’ll probably ask you to get him tickets to the final task of the Triwizard Tournament.”

“I think that can be arranged.”

“Then you’ve found a way to get one of my friends to like you already. If Ayberk’s happy, Tulip’s happy.”

Remus still didn’t think the whole thing sounded any less like an opportunity for humiliation and disaster. “And if you’re happy, I’m happy.”

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

Help.

Regards,

Mr. Moony

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

Please be more specific.

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

Your cousin wants me to meet her friends on the Tuesday of the Easter holiday.

Regards,

Mr. Moony

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

I see. That is an insurmountable problem. Will her friend Tulip be there? At Christmas, Tonks mentioned that Tulip has a theory that you murdered your school girlfriend.

I choked on my wine when she said it, which was a real shame. It was good wine.

Regards, 

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

WHAT ELSE DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DORA’S FRIENDS AND WHAT THEY THINK OF ME??

Regards,

Mr. Moony

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

I don’t know anything else about little Nymphadora’s little friends. Did you want me to borrow the invisibility cloak and spy on them? Or pass the pretty one a note in Herbology? Where is your date going to be? I could show up, coincidentally, and sit a discreet distance away and cause a distraction if it looks like you’re in trouble? Or did you need me to seduce one of them so you can get Nymphadora alone? James once asked me to lock some of Lily’s friends in the kitchen so they couldn’t interrupt him while he was trying to talk to Lily— is that what you would like me to do with Tulip and company?

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

You’re right. Yes.

Regards,

Mr. Moony

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

… Yes to locking them in the kitchen? I think that’s a little extreme, mate. They may have been sixteen years old recently, but the same is not true of you.

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

No, yes to crashing the date. Or rather, being invited to join the date. I would rather duel a Death Eater than do this alone.

Regards,

Mr. Moony

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

If Tonks doesn’t object, I will join you and the children on Tuesday.

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

“Can Sirius come to the brewery on Tuesday?” Remus blurted out the next time he saw Dora. The request sounded ludicrous to his own ears. He was the one who was almost inappropriately older, and yet he was asking Dora’s permission as if she were the parent and he were the child. She was so much younger, and yet so much more experienced and skilled in social situations than he was ever likely to become. 

She didn’t seem to notice how ridiculous he sounded. “The more the merrier. You asked him?”

“I begged him,” Remus admitted, deciding spontaneously that honesty was the best policy. He couldn’t make himself sound any more ridiculous than he already had, and Dora had a right to know with whom she was getting involved.

“Is this what you did in school? Used him as your wingman?”

“I didn’t date in school,” he reminded her. “And if I had, I wouldn’t have wanted Sirius anywhere in the vicinity. No girl would have paid any attention to me if he was in the room. Even if he was steadfastly ignoring her. Even if he was actively rude to her. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anything he tried to do. He was just _that_ good-looking.”

“He’s still handsome now, even after Azkaban, isn’t he?” Dora asked. 

Remus’ knees turned to water and it took all of his self-control to keep himself upright. Dora had said almost exactly the same words, in almost exactly the same tone, in the future-past. Then, they had been lying in the dirt, doing surveillance for the Order. The Death Eaters for whom _they had been waiting had never come._

_"I suppose you've fallen in love with him, then?" he asked derisively. "He always got the women."_

_Dora, too, went rigid with anger. "You'd know perfectly well who I've fallen for, if you weren't too busy feeling sorry for yourself to notice," she snapped._

He should have kissed her on the spot.

Instead, he pretended to have no idea what she could possibly have meant.

Within weeks, Sirius was dead and Remus had fled to live with the werewolf pack.

There were few times when having a second chance at life made his course so abundantly clear.

“Yes,” he agreed. “He’s been looking much healthier, lately. He was even bragging about his perfect hair the other day.”

Dora screwed up her face the way she did when she morphed. Her hair darkened and fell artfully across her forehead the way Sirius’ did.

“It does look better on you, of course,” Remus told her.

“Not my color, though,” she said, and her hair returned to her favorite shade of pink.

“Sirius will be glad to hear it. He won’t want the competition.” 

“It’s not his hair, though,” she mused thoughtfully. “It’s not even how he looks in spite of Azkaban. It’s as if… as if somehow Azkaban has become part of his good looks. Like Azkaban went up against the infamous Black gorgeousness and lost. And all of a sudden Sirius has realized it.”

“I don’t know how sudden it was,” Remus said, thinking of how Sirius had cried in his sleep and then resolutely asked Remus to summon Félicité. “But either way, be prepared for women to look at him and walk into walls when we go to the brewery.”

“My friend Penny is like that. We can make them walk together,” Dora suggested. She scrunched up her face again and turned herself into a pretty blue-eyed witch with her impossibly blonde hair plaited down her back. “Every boy was in love with her, and half of the girls, too. Even I didn’t mind staring at her for hours trying to get her hair just right. When we were in school, she used to do it like this.” The plait re-arranged itself into a complicated style involving a knot and two plaits with curtains of soft hair behind them. “I must have watched her do it hundreds of times, and I still have no idea how she managed it without magic.”

“You were never jealous of the attention she got?”

“I knew as soon as I met her that she was amazing, and that the best thing I could do as her friend was appreciate that and not be jealous. I felt the same way about Tulip, and my other friends, too.”

“You were a much wiser young woman than I was a young man.”

“That’s always the way,” said Dora loftily, and she let her hair and face return to normal once more. “Anyway, Sirius isn’t as good-looking as you.”

Remus laughed. “In your completely unbiased opinion?”

“I certainly hope I’m biased,” she said. “I’d like to become even more biased.” She leaned in close to him and brushed her lips against his before greedily pulling him in for a deep kiss. For a moment, he forgot that they were in a classroom, forgot that they were meant to be working, forgot everything but her touch. 

“I ought to cancel my classes and bring you upstairs,” he said as he drew back regretfully.

“Can we?” she asked eagerly.

“I signed a stupid contract. It says I actually have to teach.”

She mirrored his teasing frustration. “I took a stupid oath. It says I actually have to protect.”

They grinned at each other, and in that instant Remus felt as happy as he ever remembered feeling. He knew very well that life provided frightfully few perfect moments and that this was one of them. 

“Just remember,” Dora whispered in his ear. “I will thank you properly for meeting my friends even though you’re nervous.”

He was looking forward to it.

**_To be continued._ **


	42. Tonks Interlude D

She put on her heavy Auror boots. She wasn't on duty, or even on call, today, but three years of Mad-Eye's tender ministrations had taken their toll and she always felt most comfortable knowing that she was ready to run, ready to fight. Luckily, the boots were the height of Muggle fashion, so she knew she would blend in at the brewery.

Under the boots went sheer black tights. She didn't bother to put holes in them on purpose; she knew she'd tear them by accident before the night was out.

Over the tights was a short plaid skirt. It was one of the skirts that Scrimgeour had expressly forbidden her from wearing to Hogwarts duty. (He didn't mind what she wore on her usual undercover duty as long as she could fight without taking the time to transfigure it, and as long as she blended in, of course.) There had been a comment about how _that's not the kind of education the Ministry wants you to give the students_ . She was reasonably certain that the students weren't going to learn anything new from her skirt, but orders were orders and she'd never worn it to the school. (Unless she'd already owned this skirt during her own student days? She might have.) In any event, the skirt was going to invite Remus to look. She wanted him to look.

Over the skirt was a white t-shirt and her favorite cropped leather jacket.

She smiled at herself in the mirror before turning her hair into a cascading mess of red, orange, and yellow.

"Perfect," she decided. She was running early, but she Apparated to Sirius' cottage in Hogsmeade straight away. If Sirius wanted to laugh at her for being early, that was fine. She wouldn't apologize for being eager to have practically all of her favorite people in the same place for once.

Sirius opened his door almost before her vision cleared. His eyes swept critically over her carefully-chosen outfit. "I like the jacket, and does your mother know you own that skirt?"

She rolled her eyes. "You do know how to dress as a Muggle, don't you?"

"Who do you think gave you your first leather jacket?"

She remembered being a little girl and admiring Sirius' jacket. She didn't remember that he'd given her one of her own. Somehow it didn't surprise her that he had. "You never took me for a ride on your motorcycle, though," she said. That was a promise she remembered him making, though it had hardly been his fault that he hadn't been able to keep it.

"You aren't mature enough yet," he said. She could tell that he remembered the day he'd promised to kidnap her from Hogwarts and take her for a ride, too. It had been, unless she missed her guess, the last time they'd seen each other before his arrest. "Maybe when you're older, we can go for a ride."

"I'm old enough to take a brewery tour!" she objected, as if this were somehow a serious conversation.

"Only with my supervision."

"I only agreed to let you come to make Remus happy," she said.

"Good, because I only agreed to come to make Remus happy."

She yawned. "Why don't you go upstairs and change and stop boring me?"

He went, muttering unflattering things about her under his breath. She swallowed her laugh as she seated herself in the front window and awaited Remus.

As soon as she saw him round the corner, she threw open the door and ran to him. He had really come. They were really going to do something outside castle walls. She wouldn't have to share him with his students.

Why on earth had she asked him to meet her friends? She should have asked him to spend all day and all night with her, just the two of them.

His eyes widened as he looked at her, and she couldn't help feeling enormously self-satisfied. He appreciated the skirt more than Sirius or Scrimgeour had, that was for sure.

"Hello, Dora," was all he said. He usual control was still present and accounted for. But she would see what he was like without it. She liked a challenge. And the skirt was but the first step in her plan.

"Hello, Remus."

They stared at each other. It was just as well that they had agreed to meet at Sirius' house before traveling to the brewery, because without Sirius emerging and hustling them along, they might not have moved until the sun had set and risen again.

* * *

Penny, Tulip, and Ayberk were waiting for them outside the brewery. Remus thrust a set of tickets to the Third Task into Ayberk's hands the instant they were introduced. Ayberk thanked Remus profusely.

Tulip watched the exchange with a sly expression on her face. Tonks didn't know what Tulip had to be sly about, and she didn't care. She, personally, thought it was cute that Remus was so eager to please her friends- or rather, her friend's fiancé. Tonks barely knew Ayberk, but Ayberk made Tulip happy, and Tonks trusted Tulip's judgement.

Penny, meanwhile, spoke to the Muggle in charge, and in short order they were led to something called the mash room.

"These vessels are fifty years old," their tour guide told them proudly. "Built to last. We mash three times a day, six days a week… but I'm getting ahead of myself. Beer is made from four basic ingredients: barley, water, hops and yeast. The basic idea is to extract the sugars from grains so that the yeast can turn it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, creating beer. The brewing process starts when the barley is harvested and processed by heating, drying out and cracking. We call this malting. The goal of malting is to isolate the enzymes needed for brewing so that it's ready for the next step, which is mashing."

"Do you always use barley, or can you use other grains?" asked Penny.

"Usually barley. Sometimes wheat or rye, or something similar."

Penny nodded.

"What we do in this room is mashing. That means the barley is steeped in hot, but not boiling, water for about an hour. This activates enzymes in the grains that cause it to break down and release its sugars. Once this is done, we drain the water from the mash. It's full of sugar from the grains. It's called wort…"

Tonks was interested; really, she was. She liked to understand how Muggles did things. She liked to be able to talk to Muggles as if she were one of them. She saw Penny's point about the similarity between beer-making and potion-making.

She saw that Tulip and Ayberk were holding hands.

She was overwhelmingly jealous.

She and Remus had never held hands. They'd stolen glances and stolen kisses and occasionally found themselves wrapped around each other in a truly stolen moment, but they'd never held hands.

She wondered whether he would refuse to hold her hand because of his obsession with werewolf nails causing permanent scars. (She'd seen the scar on the inside of Sirius' right wrist. It was practically invisible. Remus had spoken of it as if it were some kind of brand, as noticeable as the lightening bolt on poor Harry Potter's forehead.)

The time had passed for wondering. She reached out and grabbed his hand.

He almost recoiled, but then he laced his fingers through hers, warm and satisfying and solid. She winked at him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sirius make a disgusted face. She stuck her tongue out at him. He mouthed that he was telling her mother.

She turned so that all she could see was Remus.

Meanwhile, the tour guide had answered all of Penny's questions and ushered them toward a steep set of stairs.

"Was Penny this much of a teacher's pet in school?" Ayberk stage-whispered to Tulip.

"Well, Snape did almost smile at her one time," Tulip stage-whispered back.

Penny ignored them with a flip of her long, blonde plait.

"Maybe this will be what gets Penny out of the magical world entirely," Tulip added more quietly. "Potions are the only thing keeping her around, and if Muggles are making potions of their own…"

"No," whispered Penny, deigning to respond this time. "This is good, but nothing is as good as brewing a potion."

Tonks returned her focus to the sensation of Remus' hand in hers. It was definitely better than brewing a potion.

They stairs led straight to the roof, where their guide pointed out a tower ("chimneys from the boiler house," he explained) as well as other buildings owned by the brewery ("that's where we do our fermentation after the boiling").

Then it was back downstairs into a crowded hall where they were presented with a row of samples of different sorts of beer. Tonks regretted letting go of Remus' hand to taste each with interest, but she was delighted when Remus and Tulip began comparing the flavors. Tonks and Ayberk and Sirius joined in; Penny, of course, was peppering the bartender with yet more questions about the storage and transport of beer.

She didn't realize how completely they had lost track of Penny until they heard her voice rising above the din. _"I asked you not to do that."_

Ayberk was closest, and he was quick to put himself between Penny and the man at whom Penny's ire was directed.

"Redhead's yours," the man slurred. "Leave the blonde to me."

Tonks let the wand concealed up her jacket sleeve slide into her hand. One whispered cramping jinx aimed at his stomach, and he would no longer be a problem. None of the Muggles would be any the wiser; they'd assume that some sort of karmic justice had had its revenge on a man who'd drunk too much.

"The blonde is mine," growled Sirius before Tonks could aim. He dropped one arm around Penny's shoulders, and his glare was enough to make the man take a giant step back.

The tour guides rushed in, ready to usher their groups out of the tasting rooms and to whichever parts of the brewery they had not yet seen. As Penny assured the others that nothing had happened, and she was fine, Sirius politely asked the guides if he and his friends could exit their tour early.

Tonks locked eyes with Tulip. They silently agreed that they would rather continue. But Remus, Sirius, and Penny all looked ready to flee, and Tonks decided that she would rather leave early than break up the group.

They were escorted down a narrow hallway to a large room lined with long tables. It looked enough like the Great Hall to be instantly comforting; she felt Remus relax beside her. Their guide offered them a number of apologies and, more practically, a free round of drinks.

"I'll get the drinks," Sirius volunteered. "Go sit in the far corner so we can see everyone and keep our backs against the wall."

"Right you are, Mad-Eye," Tonks whispered. She should have used the cramping jinx, Sirius glare or no Sirius glare.

A few moments later, they were ensconced in the corner Sirius had chosen. Tonks got to lean against Remus as they sat side-by-side on a long bench, and she decided that this was better than finishing the tour after all.

"You should have let me hex him," she told Sirius anyway, just on principle, as he deposited a glass in front of her. "No one would have seen."

"You don't know that," he said. "I was not going to take my chances with a Ministry investigation, and an Auror and an employee of the Department of Mysteries," and here he nodded at Tulip, "shouldn't want to either."

"You're no fun," she told Sirius.

"I can live with that," he said.

It was then that she realized that she hadn't heard Penny's voice since they'd left the tasting area. "Are you all right, Penny?" she asked, feeling dreadful for not having asked sooner.

"Come with me to the loo," said Penny. "You too, Tulip."

_"She looked all right,"_ Tonks heard Remus worry as she, Penny, and Tulip ungracefully rose from their places on the bench.

_"She's all right. They're going to discuss you in private,"_ Ayberk posited.

* * *

The loo was crowded, but loudly and happily so. Penny pulled Tulip and Tonks into a corner behind the sinks.

"Is this a blind date?" Penny asked.

It took Tonks a second to understand Penny's meaning. "You mean Sirius?"

Penny nodded. "Why did you invite him?"

"I didn't. Remus did. Remus wanted him here because he thinks he's too old for me and he wanted someone his own age in the group. That's all."

Penny sighed. "I understand. Thank you."

"I wouldn't send you on a blind date without asking you!" Tonks added, feeling almost insulted. "You know me better than that."

"I do. I'm sorry. I… didn't expect things to happen that way in the tasting room."

"Sirius should have let me hex him," Tonks muttered.

"It would have been better than grabbing at Penny like she's his property," agreed Tulip. "Why didn't you hex him yourself, Penny?"

"I would have if he'd kept going." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I didn't want to use magic on a Muggle if I didn't have. And my wand is in my bag. I'd have been seen."

"Tonks had a clear shot," said Tulip. "Sirius stopped her."

"And he should have. He spoke the man's own language to him and ended it without Ministry involvement. What you think was a clean shot might not have been if any one of forty people in that room moved. I don't necessarily like that this man was only going to respond to another man instead of listening to me-"

"You don't _necessarily_ like that?" objected Tulip.

"I don't like it at all, but I'd rather not ruin the night for everyone else or have innocent bystanders subjected to memory charms. And I certainly understand why Sirius Black, of all people, doesn't want to be in a big group of Muggles when a wizard casts a curse. He handled it as well as anyone could have under the circumstances."

Tonks admired her multicolored eyebrows in the mirror as she wiggled them. "Well, if you like the way he handles things so much, and you were interested in a not-so-blind date with my favorite cousin…" she teased.

Penny laughed. "No."

Tulip grinned her most sharkish grin. "I love Ayberk and I'm going to marry him. But Sirius Black is the best-looking human being I've ever seen in real life."

"There are more important things than physical attractiveness, Tulip," said Penny. She shook her hair loose and turned toward the mirror to replait it.

"Of course there are. Intelligence. Sense of humor. He has those. And since he spent twelve years in Azkaban, nothing you do is going to seem too bothersome to him in comparison."

Penny's blue eyes saddened. "That poor man. Twelve years. It's amazing that he's as… normal as he is."

"See?" said Tulip. "You could make him feel better. You should definitely ask him out."

Penny's hair was perfect again. Tonks still couldn't figure out how that happened without magic. "No."

"Is it because he's too old?" asked Tulip.

"And do you think _Remus_ is too old?" Tonks added.

"I like Remus better because _Remus_ thinks Remus is too old," Tulip opined. "If he'd been one of those men who said 'I have such a young spirit that the age difference doesn't matter,' or 'she's mature for her age and I'm immature for mine, so it works out,' I wouldn't have liked him."

"So you don't think he murdered his school girlfriend anymore?" teased Penny. She'd finished her hair and decided to start on Tulip's. Tulip submitted, looking mildly amused.

"No. Definitely did not murder his school girlfriend," Tulip confirmed. "Too dull for that."

"He's not dull!" Tonks snapped. If only they could watch him bring a classroom to life, hear Mad-Eye's stories about how he'd fought against You-Know-Who, learn his most carefully concealed secret…

"I don't think he's dull, either," said Penny soothingly. "But I do think he did something he wasn't comfortable with when he came here tonight. You said it yourself, that's why he wanted Sirius along. On the one hand, that's good. It means he cares enough about you to put what you want above what he wants. On the other hand, do you want someone who's always going to be uncomfortable in your world?"

"We're from the same world," said Tonks. Penny, a witch with one Muggle parent and four Muggle grandparents, ought to understand that better than most.

"Are you?" asked Tulip. "You used to refuse to date at all because you said anyone you dated would slow you down. Are you sure he won't slow you down?"

Tonks glanced about to make certain she wouldn't be overheard. "Every day, I track the darkest dark wizards and sometimes I end up fighting for my life. If someone wants to remind me to slow down in my free time, I think it might be okay."

Tulip and Penny exchanged a long look and an approving nod.

"I'd never be interested in Sirius, but not because of his age," said Penny, as if she and Tulip hadn't just been passing judgment on Tonks' sort-of-boyfriend right in front of her face. "It's because the last thing I want is to be pulled that deeply into the magical world. You know I never got over what happened to my sister her first year at school."

This time, it was Tulip and Tonks who exchanged a long look. Beatrice Haywood had been trapped in a magical portrait by a curse at the age of eleven. When she'd been rescued the better part of a year later, she had no longer been the bubbly girl who had idolized her older sister. Tulip privately thought that Beatrice had always been destined to outgrow her hero-worship of Penny, portrait or no portrait. Tonks privately thought that Penny ought to be pleased that at least Beatrice still cared for her and didn't want to kill her, which was quite different from Andromeda's relationship with her sisters. They both knew better than to share these private thoughts with Penny. Penny blamed Hogwarts and Penny blamed magic.

"Beatrice was nobody in particular and she was still put in danger. Harry Potter? The Boy Who Lived? The way the magical world treats him is a thousand times worse, and Sirius Black is his godfather. I don't want to be anywhere near that."

"No more jokes about Penny marrying Sirius until next week?" Tulip asked Tonks.

"Better make it the week after next," said Tonks.

Penny laughed merrily and looped her left arm through Tonks' and her right arm through Tulip's. "Let's go. We've been in here long enough."

* * *

They returned to their corner to find Sirius, Remus, and Ayberk singing the praises of Viktor Krum.

Ayberk had known Krum at school. "He was always special and he never let it go to his head. He was a Quidditch prodigy from the minute he walked in the door. When he was eleven years old, the upperclassmen who normally wouldn't have noticed a first-year if they'd stepped on him were going out of their way to say hello."

"He conducts himself very well at Hogwarts," Remus added. "I've never seen him take advantage of his status, not even when his headmaster encourages it."

"Ah, Karkaroff," said Ayberk with a scowl. "Don't think everyone at Durmstrang is like him. They're not."

"We could understand more about Durmstrang if you could tell us where it is," said Sirius innocently.

"Not on your life. Or mine."

"How did you meet Tulip, then?" asked Remus. "You didn't go to school together."

Tulip and Ayberk looked at each other and grinned. "I went to Durmstrang in the first place because I had a cousin one year older who lived in Turkey and attended. I wanted to go to school with him, and the board at Durmstrang agreed to admit me. Over Karkaroff's objections, I might add. Two years ago, I went to visit my cousin, but he already had visitors from the other side of his family."

"His cousin is my cousin, too," said Tulip. "But I promise we aren't related to each other."

"Unlike half the married couples in our family tree," said Sirius to Tonks.

"That's only my mum's family," said Tonks, knowing Sirius wouldn't mind. "My dad's family is normal."

"Nothing about you is normal," said Tulip.

Tonks shrugged. It was true.

They talked for another two hours before conceding that it was time to head home.

* * *

She took Remus' arm to Apparate him directly into her flat. The flat was rather plain; she worked long hours and spent a good number of her free nights at her parents' house.

"It's not much to look at," she told Remus.

"It's yours and it's wonderful," he replied.

She shrugged off her leather jacket and reached for her wardrobe, which happened to be invisible. She misjudged the wardrobe's location and stumbled; Remus caught her, because of course he did.

Then he did something she didn't expect: he snapped the hidden wardrobe's door open.

No one had ever been able to open that door without her telling them that it was there.

Most people couldn't open it on the first try even _knowing_ that it was there.

She let him take her jacket from her hands and hang it up as she stared at him.

"If I didn't know better," she said, "I'd think you'd been here before. Spying on me, perhaps."

There followed a long moment in which Remus fumbled for words the way he never did when he was in front of a classroom full of cheeky teenagers or going toe-to-toe with Sirius' sometimes-biting wit. It was cute, but eventually she took pity on him.

"I'm joking, you know," she told him. "I realize you're just brilliant." She reached for his coat, a nondescript, classic-and-classy sort of thing, but he backed away. "You don't have to be back at the school until morning," she reminded. "You can stay." She caught his gaze and held it. "Come see the bedroom."

"That's a bad idea." His voice was rough. She didn't believe for a second that he really thought it was a bad idea.

"What's so bad about it?"

"I know what you're suggesting."

"I certainly hope you do."

"I want you to have more time to consider whether you're ready."

She tried to wrap her arms around his neck, intending to kiss him and tell him that she had had more than enough time to decide what she wanted. He backed away again.

"All right," she agreed. "Why don't you hang up your coat, and we will sit at my table a safe distance apart so that I can explain why I'm ready."

At least he looked amused instead of worried by the suggestion, and he hung up the coast as directed.

"Is this about the age thing or the werewolf thing?" she asked before they even reached the table.

"Both. Neither."

How very unhelpful. But she had interviewed dozens of witnesses and suspects and had watched her colleagues interview hundreds more. She knew how to get a real answer. "I've known about your age since I met you, and I've known about the lycanthropy since Christmas. I've had time to think about it. You've kissed me. You've flirted with me. You've held my hand. You've met my friends- you already knew my parents. You've talked to me about important things, and you've told me your potentially dangerous secret. The other day at Hogwarts, you even said you wanted to cancel classes and take me upstairs. What's changed since then?"

"I never said why I wanted to take you upstairs. You enjoyed seeing my kappa last autumn-"

"Don't play games with me right now, Remus. You're better than that."

He sighed. "I'm trying to be."

"If you don't like me- if you don't want me-"

"I like you very much. And I want you very much." The first statement was adamant; the second was quiet and reluctant.

"If I like you and you like me, and I want you and you want me, and we are both consenting adults, I fail to see the problem."

"The problem is that if we do the things that you're suggesting that we do, the heretofore undefined relationship between us will become much more serious, and I would hate to do anything that would hurt you or adversely affect your life."

"Do you trust me to decide what I want?" she asked. "Because if you don't, then suddenly I don't find you nearly as attractive and we can end this conversation now."

"I trust you." She knew he meant it. She also knew it pained him to say it. She didn't know why, but she didn't imagine that they would be getting to the bottom of _why_ tonight.

"Then as to defining the heretofore undefined relationship between us." She rose to her chair and dropped to her knees in front of him. She couldn't quite stop herself from smiling when she thought of what a woman dropping to her knees before a man usually implied. His eyes, she saw, had darkened; there was a twitch of movement in his trousers. She took one of his hands in both of hers. "Remus John Lupin, will you do me the honor of being my boyfriend?"

"I'm a long way from being a boy."

"I have a dangerous career, my own flat, more education than ninety percent of the wizarding population, and a Muggle drivers license. Children don't have those things. Adults do. But I'd like to be your girlfriend."

He pulled her off of her knees and into his lap; she bit back a squeal of surprised delight, thinking that that would make him claim she was too young all over again. "Yes, Nympadora Vulpecula Tonks, I would be honored if you would be my girlfriend."

This time she couldn't hide the squawk of indignation. She would have slid off of his lap had he not held her fast. "How did you know about _Vulpecula_ ? No one knows about that!" She growled low in her throat. "It has to have been Sirius. Oh, the next time I see him-" She pulled off one heavy boot and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a thud so satisfying that she pulled off the second boot and threw it, too.

Remus' chest shook with laughter against her. "Would you like to throw my shoes, too?"

"I would," she decided. Rather than give up her comfortable position on his lap, she used her wand to summon first one shoe, then the other, into her hands. His shoes were lighter than hers, and the thuds they made weren't quite so deliciously loud. Still, there was something soothing about having four pieces of footwear to throw instead of two, and her anger dissipated as fast as it had arisen.

She readjusted herself so that she was straddling him and divested herself of her shirt and bra before vanishing her skirt and her tights with a flick of her wand. As she hadn't been wearing anything beneath them, this left her in the undeniable position of being naked.

"Would you," she asked against his mouth, "reconsider coming to see my bedroom?"

"I believe I would," he said.

It would have been nice if sliding gracefully from his lap and leading him into the bedroom had been a possibility. It wasn't, of course. She accidentally kicked him, and she tripped, and she knocked a pretty little enchanted painting Badeea Ali had done for her in seventh year from the wall. But they made it to the bedroom nonetheless.

It would have been nice if her Metamorphmagus abilities had extended to allowing her to slap a loving-lustful expression on her face to hide her horror when she saw the scars. His arms were patterned with more cursed wounds than she would have thought possible. His right arm looked as if it might have been severed at one point, and on his shoulder was the bite mark that could only have come from Fenrir Greyback himself. His legs weren't much better than his arms, and his chest was criss-crossed with scars, too.

He sat beside her on the bed, naked and vulnerable, and let her gape.

"I can cover up," he told her when she was able to think and hear again. "We don't have to do anything more than sit and talk tonight. Or I can leave. I know it's a lot to take in. We can wait. We can go as slowly as-"

She didn't believe in waiting or going slowly. She believed in seizing the moment, and so she seized him.

For all his earlier hesitance, when he touched her it seemed as if he had touched her before. She was reminded of their first kiss. He'd kissed her as if he'd known her. He did other things as if he'd known her, too.

She wasn't complaining.

* * *

When he crawled out of her warm bed to return to Hogwarts in the early hours of the morning, he kissed her forehead and whispered for her to go back to sleep. She would have liked to obey, but instead she lay awake feeling utterly bereft.

She knew that they fit. She knew that he belonged here, with her.

She just wasn't entirely sure why.

**_To be continued._ **


	43. Sirius, Wishing

On the night before the Final Task, the families of the three champions were invited to Hogwarts to take part in their children's last-minute preparations. Harry wasn't a champion, but Remus had invited Sirius to sit in on Cedric's final supplementary Defense lesson anyway.

Sirius accepted, of course. He never turned down an offer to be a part of Harry's life; they'd missed too many moments as it was.

And for the next twenty-four hours in particular, he didn't want Harry out of his sight more than necessary. He hadn't lived through Harry's first brush with the Tri-Wizard Tournament the way Remus had, but he had immersed himself in Remus' memories. Through Remus' eyes, he had read letters written in his own handwriting describing what he had seen. He had watched himself explain to Remus that the trophy had been a Portkey, that Diggory had been murdered before Harry's eyes, that Harry had been bled by Peter-fucking-Pettigrew as part of the ceremony to return Voldemort to power.

Even through layers of surreal detachment, it was horrifying.

Even though he knew how much Remus had done to avoid that future- Harry wasn't even a champion, for Merlin's sake- Sirius wasn't going to feel comfortable until the trophy had been awarded, the foreign had students returned to their homes, and no one had died.

They had to keep Harry safe this time. They had to.

(And the rest of the world. It would be good to protect the rest of the world from a second reign of Voldemort, too.)

For the first ten minutes of the lesson, Remus let Harry and Cedric duel casually. Sirius drank in the sight of Harry as he sparred against the older boy. Like James, Harry was quick and athletic, more than compensating for his small, skinny build with plenty of speed. Like Lily, Harry was understatedly alert; he lacked James' flair for showing off.

Both Harry and Cedric seemed to be enjoying the workout. They were taking the exercise seriously, but not too seriously, and Sirius suspected that that might be best for the Diggory boy's preparation. It would be counterproductive for Cedric to exhaust himself before the task even began. He ought to go to bed as relaxed as possible, ready to get as much sleep as possible. Since Cedric, like Harry, was a talented Quidditch player, he most likely knew as much.

Near Sirius, Amos Diggory muttered to his wife that Harry was no match for their Cedric; after all, Cedric had beaten Harry to the Snitch when they'd flown against each other the previous year. Under any other circumstances, Sirius would have pointed out that Harry had been knocked from his broom by a dementor, and if Cedric had to brag about winning in that situation, well, he hadn't much to brag about at all.

Today he was too worried to bother about Amos Diggory's blather.

Remus called for Harry and Cedric to stop, and they did, grinning at each other.

"Now," Remus told Cedric. "I'm going to quiz you about obstacles you may face tomorrow. The problem is that Harry will be attacking you as you answer, and you won't know when, how, or from which direction."

"Like the last Imperius lesson," said Cedric with a determined nod.

"Quite. Now, Harry, we don't want to put Cedric in the Hospital Wing should you happen to get a perfect hit, so limit yourself to harmless spells. Tickling charms and the like. And because it's a special occasion, I suppose you can use _Expelliarmus_ ."

Both Harry and Cedric chuckled as if this were some sort of inside joke. Sirius vaguely recalled that Remus was concerned that Harry was so very good at disarming that he used it when other spells would have been more appropriate. Moony must have gotten into the habit of forbidding Harry to cast it.

Indeed, before Remus had managed to ask Cedric more than three questions about how he would handle a blast-ended skrewt, a boggart, and an acromantula, Harry had disarmed Cedric.

Harry returned Cedric's wand without comment, and Remus began peppering Cedric with riddles.

"What is greater than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it, the rich need it, and if you eat it, you'll die?"

Harry disarmed Cedric a second time despite Cedric throwing up a shield charm as he pondered the answer.

"I hardly think he'll be asked to solve children's riddles during the final task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament!" Amos objected loudly.

"He will be if there's a sphinx in the maze," said Harry just as loudly.

"And if not, it won't have hurt anything for me to practice doing two things at once," said Cedric mildly. He returned his attention to Remus. "The answer is 'nothing.' The poor have it, the rich need it, and if you eat it you'll die."

"Very good," Remus told him. "I think you'll be in fine shape for tomorrow. Is there any spell in particular that you want to review?"

Cedric shook his head. "I don't think so, Sir. Thank you again for giving up your evenings all year to help me train."

"It's been my pleasure, Cedric."

Harry backed away and rummaged in his bag to retrieve his Everything Knife. Sirius himself had given it to Harry, and he smiled to see Harry putting it to use. "Would you like to borrow this again?" he asked Cedric.

"Yes," said Cedric. "Thank you. And thank you, too, for helping with my training."

"It's been my pleasure, Cedric," said Harry, in a fair imitation of Remus. Cedric looked fondly down at Harry, almost as if at a beloved younger brother.

Sirius hoped that they hadn't been this friendly the first time around. Harry was too young to watch Cedric die. (And, tangentially, Cedric was too young to die.)

"Might we have a private word with you, Professor Lupin?" asked Amos Diggory. Sirius and Harry took that as their cue to leave.

"Good luck, Cedric," Harry yelled over his shoulder. "All of Hogwarts is counting on you, but no pressure."

Cedric's laughter was cut off when the door closed firmly behind them.

* * *

"Are you all right, Harry?" asked Sirius as they made their way toward Gryffindor Tower.

"Why wouldn't I be? I'm not the one who's meant to be fighting acromantulas and sphinxes tomorrow."

"I notice that you didn't answer my question. You found yourself taking part in the second task regardless of whether you were meant to."

For an instant, Harry looked truly alarmed. "Is that going to happen again?" he asked. "Did you give them permission to make me a hostage?"

"No," said Sirius quickly. "I did nothing of the sort, and if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have given permission the first time. It was a hasty decision last time. I thought you might think it was fun."

"I would have," said Harry. "I would have if it hadn't been so… odd."

"Do you want to come to Hogsmeade with me tonight?" Sirius didn't think for a minute that Harry would agree. But removing Harry entirely from the vicinity of the tournament was very, very tempting.

"No. Ron and Hermione will be waiting for me, and the school year's almost over. I'll have to go back to the Dursleys', and I won't see them until…"

"We'll make it as short and painless as possible. You have my word."

Harry nodded tightly. Sirius didn't know if he was worried about Cedric, or worried about getting pulled into the maze, or merely irritated that he was going to have to return to the Dursleys' home for yet another visit. What Sirius did know was that he wasn't going to get any answers from Harry standing in the corridor outside Gryffindor Tower the night before one of the biggest events Hogwarts had held in years. He and Harry had begun to feel more natural together as the year had worn on, but at times like these nothing made up for the fact that Sirius had missed almost thirteen years of Harry's short life.

He wished that he knew more about Harry's tells.

He wished that he knew more about Harry's life.

He wished that he had had more time to earn Harry's trust and prove himself worthy of it.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"See you tomorrow." Harry repositioned the bag on his shoulder and gave the password to the Fat Lady. Sirius watched him disappear and then retraced his steps before exiting the castle.

* * *

The Beauxbatons Carriage was beautiful in the fading spring light.

A group of students and adults were sitting beside the carriage, laughing and talking. Fleur, like Cedric, must have just completed her final preparations for the maze. She had performed so poorly in the previous task that she was all but eliminated from the competition already. Perhaps that was a weight off of her shoulders; all she could do now was test herself against herself.

The Beauxbatons contingent would be leaving soon, and with them would go Professor Félicité Palomer. Sirius was struck by the sudden urge to see her one last time.

The laughing, chattering group went silent as he approached them. He almost laughed. If he had been spying on them, they would never have realized it-unless Félicité's research on his experience in Azkaban had extended to knowing that sometimes he was a large black dog. It probably had. Yes, if he had been spying on them he would have used a disillusionment charm and a good hiding place.

It didn't matter. He wasn't spying, or hiding, or any of it. Unlike last year, he was a free man who went where he pleased.

So much had changed in a year.

He had nearly reached the group when Félicité recognized him and rose to greet them. Her dark hair had been tied back rather severely, in the style of one Minerva McGonagall, and for the first time Sirius considered what it must like to be her student rather than her… whatever it was that he was to her.

"Sirius," she greeted. "Bonjour. Je suis content de te voir. Il y a quelqu'un que je veux que tu rencontres." _I'm happy to see you. There's someone I want you to meet._

Félicité had never before addressed him in French, although she knew perfectly well that he spoke it. When she beckoned for a small girl to come forward, he understood why.

This could only be Marianne.

She was tiny, even for an eight-year-old; she looked like a baby playing dress-up in her pale blue school uniform, perfectly fitted though it was. Her hair and her eyes were precisely the same shade of light brown.

"Marianne," Félicité continued in the manner of a formal introduction. "Je te présente Sirius Black."

Marianne's lips formed a perfect O, but she said nothing.

He squatted in the grass so that he and Marianne would be eye-to-eye, and offered her his hand. "Je suis heureux de te rencontrer, Mademoiselle Marianne." _Pleased to meet you, Miss Marianne._

Marianne solemnly took his hand. "Je suis heureux de vous rencontrer," she mimicked. "C'est vous qui avez vécu avec des détraqueurs pendant douze ans. C'est plus long que ce que j'ai été en vie." _You're the one who lived with the dementors for twelve years. That's longer than I've been alive._

She had been born into a world in which Voldemort had been defeated and Lily and James had been long dead. She was the age a child of his might have been if he'd worked and played for a handful of years after the war and before settling down. She was of another world, and yet the same world.

"Ton réputation te précède aussi," he told her. _Your reputation precedes you, as well._ "Tu es très courageux." _You are very brave._

"Je ne me sentais pas courageux quand c'est arrivé." _I did not feel brave when it happened._

"Moi non plus." _Nor did I._ "As-tu aimé l'école cette année?" _Have you enjoyed school this year?_ He wasn't asking merely because it was the sort of thing adults asked children they didn't know particularly well. He was asking because he really and truly wanted-needed-assurances that a child who had been mauled by dementors and lived to tell the tale had a chance to enjoy an ordinary life.

"Beaucoup, mais je suis impatient d'apprendre du professeur Palomer l'année prochaine." _Very much, but I am eager to learn from Professor Palomer next year._

"Le professeur Palomer est un excellent professeur, je suis d'accord." _I agree, Professor Palomer is an excellent teacher._ He looked for an instant into the clear eyes of the little girl. She returned his gaze frankly, as if she knew that they understood things that no one else did, and wasn't bothered in the least. He thought that she even knew that it would be easier for him to say this in a language not his own, when he wasn't looking at Félicité. "Je lui suis très reconnaissant." _I'm very grateful to her._

"Moi aussi. Elle m'a choisi pour assister à la dernière tâche demain. C'est parce que Gabrielle est mon amie et la sœur de Fleur, mais je n'ai pas eu à être autorisée à venir." _So am I. She chose me to observe the final task tomorrow. It's because Gabrielle is my friend and Fleur's sister, but I didn't have to be allowed to come._

"Je te souhaite une très agréable jour née demain, alors." _I wish you a good day tomorrow, then._

"Et vous aussi." _And you as well._

She curtsied and turned on her heel in a way that Sirius was reasonably sure was part of the curriculum at Beauxbatons. As she retreated, she looked at him over her shoulder with a shy smile that made his heart twist in his chest.

He hated to think of Marianne huddled by herself, alone with a dementor for several weeks.

But Marianne had been rescued. She had a family and friends (Gabrielle was whispering animatedly in her ear even now) and Félicité. She'd been held and comforted and told that she was wanted. The rest of her childhood, it seemed, would be idyllic.

None of that had been true for Harry. At six years old, he'd been made to live in a windowless cupboard, reliant on no one but himself; the same had been true when he'd been eight years old, and ten years old. Now Harry was fourteen, and he still wasn't free of the burdens the world had thrust upon him.

Not for the first time, Sirius felt a flash of rage directed at his only surviving friend. If Remus had had to mess about with time, why hadn't he saved James and Lily? Why hadn't he taken ten years instead of five and gotten Sirius released from Azkaban that much earlier? It wasn't as if Wormtail would have been difficult to find. Sirius could have taken Harry from the cupboard, embraced and loved him as someone had embraced and loved Marianne…

Something of his anger must have shown on his face, because Félicité gestured that he should walk beside her.

"Was it wrong for me to introduce you to Marianne?" she asked. "I had thought you would like to meet her."

"I did want to meet her," said Sirius honestly. "She's a beautiful child."

"She is, isn't she?" said Félicité with pride. "I'm very fond of her, as well as proud of her."

"It makes me furious to think of her suffering the way she did," said Sirius. He couldn't very well explain that he was more accurately furious because a time-traveling werewolf hadn't done a good enough job of protecting his his possibly-doomed godson.

"It makes me angry as well. No child should suffer that way. No human being should suffer that way."

They were quite alone now, having reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

"Sirius," Félicité continued quietly, "I hope that I was able to help you."

"You were." He remembered, again, the ruins of Potters' home in Godric's Hollow. He remembered every detail. He wished for James. He wished for Lily.

His body didn't shake. He lungs didn't gasp for air. His mind didn't race.

"Then this trip was successful," said Félicité. "No matter how Fleur does tomorrow."

"She'll do well," Sirius decided. He'd seen a bit of who Fleur would be as an adult in Remus' memories. She'd been one of the last people Remus had spoken to before the final battle.

"I think so, too."

"You'll return to France immediately after the Tournament concludes?"

"We will, particularly if Fleur does not prevail." She smiled. "This is, if not goodbye, at least _au revoir_ ."

" _Au revoir_ , then."

She leaned forward to kiss his cheeks, but he turned his head too quickly and their lips met.

He felt a shock of pleasure he hadn't expected- the shock of pleasure that had been missing when he'd snogged the pretty witch in Diagon Alley a year before. Without giving it much consideration, he pulled Félicité closer.

They didn't know each other at all. He'd never asked her about herself. At best, he'd been suspicious of her methods since she'd first asked to use to him to explore the longterm effects of dementors. At worst, he'd thought that she was an idiot. He'd never told her what he was thinking when he'd thought about Lily and James and Harry and Peter and Hagrid and Dumbledore and Voldemort and Godric's Hollow and Halloween and motorcycles and cats. But she'd been there when he'd found a way to live with those thoughts.

The kiss felt both as if it lasted an instant and as if it lasted an age.

"It wouldn't do," she said when she stepped back, breathing hard.

He didn't argue. He knew what she meant. They were strangers with incompatible lives, and even if it had not been thus, she had been too close to something that was his alone.

She returned to the group beside the carriage.

He returned to Hogsmeade to wait and worry and wonder if they had really managed to spare Harry.

**_To be continued._ **


	44. Harry and the Maze

Sirius' voice echoed in Harry's head as he clambered through the portrait of the Fat Lady into the Gryffindor common room.

_"Do you want to come to Hogsmeade with me tonight?"_

The offer made him nervous, although he couldn't quite say why. Sirius had always had a certain disregard for the rules; neither he nor Lupin had ever attempted to hide that. But why would Sirius offer to smuggle Harry out of Hogwarts on one of the most important nights of the year, especially when the end of the year was so close?

And why had Harry been so deeply, instinctively tempted to go?

Strange things had happened to Harry during the earlier tasks. He had been called away from the first task by Zacharias Smith, but Zacharias Smith and his friends seemed to be convinced that it had never happened. Hermione and Ron had planned to stay close to Harry during the second task, but then Cho had fallen from the staircase (that couldn't have been a coincidence) and Harry had been used as Cedric's hostage in her place. Then Dumbledore's enchantment hadn't worked on Harry that way it had worked on Hermione and little Gabrielle. He'd fought Cedric, he'd had that awful thought that was not his own that he wanted Cedric to drown. He'd cast a charm he'd never properly learned, and there had been the matter of Cedric thinking he'd seen a crown on Harry's head.

And that hadn't even been the first odd thing that had happened this year. He'd gone to meet Lupin, and the next thing he'd remembered he'd been outside the kitchens with Dobby. He'd blamed it on exhaustion, but he'd been far more exhausted in his life and he'd never simply passed out without memory of what he'd done.

For a split second, his scar ached as if with a memory. It felt like a memory of his first year when he'd drawn too near to Voldemort. And yet, in this memory, there was a crown. A crown like the crown Cedric had seen.

And then there was the thought that wasn't his own, the thought that he wanted Cedric to drown. _That_ reminded him of his second year, when he'd heard the basilisk and no one else had heard anything. _Kill… rip… tear…_

He looked about the common room. Hermione, of course, was buried beneath a stack of books. Ron was engaged in a vicious game of Exploding Snap with the twins. Both Ron and Hermione looked up and smiled at him, gesturing that he should join them.

Their welcoming smiles made his stomach turn uncomfortably. He would be leaving Hogwarts soon, and he always felt awful when he had to leave Hogwarts behind. He missed everything about Hogwarts, but above all else he missed Ron and Hermione. He hadn't lied to Sirius when he'd told him that he wanted to stay at school tonight because he didn't want to lose any more time with his best friends.

But he suddenly had a theory that he didn't want to share with Ron and Hermione until he'd checked with the one person who might have had experience with what was happening to him.

It would be a horribly awkward conversation, but there wasn't any time to figure out how to make it less so. He gestured to Ron and Hermione that he would join them soon and crossed to the other side of the common room where the younger students were gathered.

Ginny was sitting at a table working at a star chart with two of her roommates- one of whom was Christianne, Harry's date to the Yule Ball that he would just as soon have forgotten. It was Christianne who greeted him first when he approached. "Hi, Harry!" she piped up. "If you need a date to any more balls, I'm available."

Ginny looked disgusted. The third girl blushed. Harry had no idea what he ought to say. "Actually, I'd just like to, er- borrow Ginny for a moment?"

Ginny pushed back her chair so quickly that it almost toppled over. She shoved the star chart toward the center of the table. "Here, Heather, you work on this part and I'll finish mine when I get back."

Harry led Ginny to the emptiest corner of the room. It was cold and dark because it was farthest from the fire. He wished that he could have taken Ginny somewhere more private, but it was past curfew and he didn't want to get her in trouble. He was about to ask too much of her already.

Ginny looked a question at Harry with her warm, brown eyes. Her eyes were very much like her mother's, he noticed, and Mrs. Weasley had always been kinder to him than she needed to be. She'd let him stay at the Burrow during the summer and she'd always treated him like one of her own children. She'd fixed his favorite meals. She'd sent him Christmas presents. And now he was about to ask her daughter to relive the worst moment of her life.

"There's no easy way to ask this," said Harry awkwardly. "It's a rotten thing for me to ask, and I know it."

"Then just do it. Get it over quickly," Ginny suggested. "You wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

Her faith in his made him feel even worse. Ginny had always been rather taken with Harry, and he didn't want to use those feelings to his advantage. "It is important," he said. "I- I need to know what it felt like when Voldemort's diary possessed you the year before last."

Ginny paled so quickly that Harry worried she might faint. Then she answered. "There were big blank periods where I didn't know what I'd been up to. I couldn't remember what I'd been doing for hours at a time. I'd find myself somewhere and not know how I got there. That's what it's like to be possessed by You-Know-Who."

That sounded too familiar to Harry. "Did you-"

But he never got to ask another question, because Fred Weasley was jerking him roughly away from Ginny and George was pushing Ginny into a chair near the fire and shoving a bottle of butterbeer into her hand.

"Why would you ask her about that?" Fred demanded. "We saw from across the room that she looked ill, and then we hear her telling you about the time she almost died?"

Ron had followed close on Fred's heels. "Harry saved her," Ron pointed out.

"That doesn't give him the right to-"

"He wouldn't have asked without a good reason-"

"There's no reason good enough-"

"And anyway, Ginny does what she wants. If she didn't want to answer, she would have said no."

"She'd have said no to you or me. She couldn't say no to _Harry_ ." The exaggerated flourish Fred put on Harry's name made him feel even worse.

"Fred's right, Ron," Harry managed to say.

"I am," agreed Fred. "And if you don't want to miss the Final Task tomorrow with a bad case of explosive diarrhea, I suggest that you get out of my sight until I'm feeling more generous again."

Harry decided that that was a good idea. He scrambled up the stairs to the fourth year boys' dormitory with Ron at his side.

"Fred's out of order," said Ron. "He shouldn't get to tell you what to do. But it might be better for us to have an early night. When Fred's not happy… well, there was the time he turned my teddy bear into a spider, and the time he killed my puffskein using it for bludger practice, the time he burned a hole through my tongue with an acid pop, and the time he and George tried to trick me into making an Unbreakable Vow… that's the only time I've ever seen Dad get as angry as Mum. Fred swears his left buttock hasn't been the same since."

Harry had heard most of those stories before. He was tempted to ask what was so dangerous about an Unbreakable Vow, and what exactly mild-mannered Mr. Weasley had done to Fred's left buttock, but he had more important things to tell Ron.

"Ron," he said urgently, "I had to ask Ginny about-"

The dormitory door flew open to admit Dean, Seamus, and Neville. Harry gritted his teeth. He could hardly tell Ron that he thought he might have been possessed with their roommates listening in.

"It's a good job the twins usually like you Harry," said Seamus. "I don't want to think what would happen if one of the rest of us said something to Ginny they didn't care for."

"What happened after we left?" asked Ron.

"They decided they needed the whole common room to talk to Ginny. They set off more dungbombs than I've ever seen in my life," said Neville.

Now Harry noticed that the faintest whiff of dung had followed his roommates into the dormitory. "Luckily we got up here before it got too bad," said Dean. "I don't think our robes are ruined."

"They conjured some kind of bubble around themselves before they did it," added Seamus. "Neat bit of magic, that."

The next several hours were given over to tales of Fred and George's exploits over the years. They reminisced about a prank Peeves had helped the twins pull on Professor McGonagall and speculated about the next products from Weasley's Wizards Wheezes. Ron shared some stories from his childhood. Seamus gave a rapturous retelling of one of the twins' infamous parties. Dean and Neville agreed that it must be difficult for Ginny to have quite so many protective older brothers.

Harry liked Seamus and Dean and they'd always got on well. He'd promised himself that he'd be kinder to Neville once Sirius had told him about Neville's parents. And of course Ron was Harry's very best friend (along with Hermione). It would have been a nice evening under any other circumstances.

Instead, Harry tried not to look too impatient for Seamus, Dean, and Neville to go to bed so Harry could have a private word with Ron.

But somehow Harry fell asleep before that happened.

* * *

Harry was awakened by a rap on the window nearest his bed. He had fallen asleep atop his bedcovers, still wearing his robes. Ron or one of the others must have drawn his curtains shut for him, and he blearily pushed them aside as he fumbled for his glasses.

The earliest streaks of light, so pale that they didn't quite count as streaks of light, were appearing in the sky. If it hadn't been for a torch burning on the outside of the castle, Harry would never have been able to see what had rapped against the window.

It hadn't been an owl, as he had half-expected. (Hedwig didn't normally come to his room at Hogwarts, but he had no doubt that she would if there was an emergency, and Harry had complete faith in Hedwig's judgment.)

It was a crown. It was the crown he had half-seen when he'd thought of his scar hurting. Unless he missed his guess, it was the crown Cedric had seen when he'd rescued Harry from the Merpeople.

" _Ron_ !" Harry hissed frantically. He tore at the hangings surrounding Ron's bed and shook Ron's prone form. "Ron! Ron! Wake up, wake up, you have to see-"

"Wha?" Ron opened his eyes halfway. "Still night. Go to sleep."

"But Ron-"

"The puffskeins will take care of it."

With a burst of frustration, Harry looked back at the window. The crown was still there, but it was drifting away.

"Accio Firebolt!" His broom flew into his hand. He wouldn't be able to open the window wide enough to fly out after the crown, but if he was fast enough, perhaps he could make it outside in time to capture it.

There was no time to waste waking Ron, who wasn't dressed anyway. Harry would have to go alone.

He bounded down the stairs. The deserted common room barely smelled of dungbombs at all. He wondered how hard the house-elves had had to work to get it so clean so quickly.

"Harry," said a voice from near the fire.

The common room wasn't entirely deserted after all. Ginny was still here- or, more likely, she had returned after being ordered to bed by Fred and George.

"Fred and George don't tell me what to do," said Ginny harshly as she gazed fixedly at Harry. "Not Fred and George or Percy or Bill or Charlie or Ron. I talked to you because I wanted to. It was my decision, and Fred and George didn't have any business doing what they did."

"They were worried about you," said Harry. "So was I. You looked like you might faint."

"But I didn't, did I? I'm not made of glass. If there's anything else you'd like to know, you can ask me."

"There isn't," said Harry. "You answered my question, and I'll find a way to thank you. But now I have to…" How to explain what he had to do?

"You have to go flying in the middle of the night?" asked Ginny drily. "Sounds good. I'll come. You should know I steal my brothers' brooms behind their backs to practice. I'm going to try out for Chaser once Alicia and Angelina leave school. Maybe I'll try out as a reserve next year."

Ginny would not have been Harry's choice of companion. He wanted Ron and Hermione, but there was no time to get them, and having someone he trusted was better than having no one.

Besides, Ginny already had one leg through the portrait hole.

"Please stay back and stay safe," he told her. "I don't know what's going to happen. I saw- I saw a crown floating outside the dormitory window and I thought it might be dangerous."

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming?" asked Ginny, but she kept pace with him as he sped down the stairs and toward the massive front doors.

He didn't answer. He wasn't sure whether he'd been dreaming.

It was too cold to be outside without a cloak, but Harry wasn't going back for one. He threw his leg over his broom and gestured that Ginny should get on behind him. "You're honestly good on a broom?" he asked her, realizing what a ridiculous series of decisions he had just made.

"I'm better than good. I'm great. I'm as good as any of my brothers except Charlie," she said with a confidence he'd never heard from her before.

It made him like her just a bit more. He never felt as confident as when he was on a broom, either.

They took off, and Harry could tell right away from the way Ginny's body moved in time with his that she hadn't exaggerated about her flying ability. It was nothing like flying with Hermione, who much preferred to keep her feet firmly on the ground. Ginny barely touched him to hold on; her balance was excellent, and her breathing was as calm as if she had been taking a casual stroll through Professor Sprout's least dangerous greenhouse.

"You should try out for Quidditch next year," Harry told her.

"Maybe," she said noncommittally.

They zoomed toward Gryffindor Tower. To Harry's relief, it was Ginny who saw the floating crown first.

"Maybe you'll take my spot and be Seeker," he said as he aimed at the crown. It sparkled in the gray dawn, then retreated. It dove down, down, down, and Harry sped after it, trying to make certain that he didn't crash into the ground by miscalculating his and Ginny's combined weight.

As he pulled level again, twenty inches above the grass ("really excellent feint," Ginny murmured in his ear), the crown jumped into the hand of a fur-cloaked figure.

" _Imperio_ !"

Harry braced himself to resist the curse- he had long since learned to throw it off with ease- but the warm, contented sensation didn't come.

He barely had time to realize that the curse had been directed at Ginny before the crown slammed down on his head. His scar exploded with pain; the rest of his body stiffened so that he could not move.

"Ginny!" he shouted through the fiery haze. "Ginny, you need to resist it! Tell the voice you want to do what you want to do, not what it tells you to do!"

But it was difficult to explain how to resist the Imperius Curse to someone who had never tried it before. That was why Lupin had gone to the trouble of bringing Aurors into his classes and cursing the older students himself. But Ginny was too young to have had anti-Imperius lessons. Lupin had taught the course to the fourth years and up, and had taught the third years the usual lessons in defense against dark creatures.

Ginny ignored Harry. She dreamily took his broom from his hand and drifted a few feet away.

 _"You fought against Voldemort himself!"_ Harry urged her.

A heavy hand landed an angry blow across his back. _"Do not say his name!"_

The fur-cloaked man was, of course, Igor Karkaroff.

"Take the broom up to the Great Hall and wait for breakfast," Karkaroff instructed Ginny. "When they ask where Harry is, tell him that the two of you went out for a morning flight, and Harry asked you to bring his broom back to the castle. He wanted time alone to think."

 _"Don't do it, Ginny!"_ It was a better plan than Karkaroff knew. Everyone in Gryffindor had watched the twins forcibly separate Harry and Ginny the night before. It made perfect sense that he and Ginny would have planned to finish their conversation as soon as possible, and that Harry would avoid Ginny's brothers after they did. (He wouldn't have, really. He would have let Fred and George have at him. But not everyone understood that, intimidating as the twins could be when they were motivated.)

Ginny didn't seem to hear him. She drifted toward the castle as the sun rose around them, his broom in her hand and a relaxed smile on her face.

"Now you," said Karkaroff. The sickening-cool feeling of a disillusionment charm slid over Harry's body; Karkaroff himself suddenly became less noticeable. No one would be able to see them.

He marched Harry toward the Quidditich pitch, which had been (inappropriately, in Harry's opinion) transformed into the maze the champions would have to navigate for the final task. Harry wasn't quite certain how he was being made to walk. He couldn't move his body at all otherwise. Karkaroff was physically dragging him by the arm, but something about the crown was keeping him from resisting.

He had to get the crown off of his head.

Almost as soon as Harry had the thought, Karkaroff waved his wand, the crown stuck to Harry's head even more tightly.

Another wave of Karkaroff's wand made the side of the maze vanish. They walked through, and then the maze re-formed around them.

Harry could hear voices carrying toward them from other parts of the maze.

_No, no need to restrain the sphinx. She'll stay where she's put._

_Double check the charms to keep that section cool and dark. We don't want the boggart to wander out._

There had to be dozens of skilled witches and wizards working to create the maze the champions would enter in a few short hours. All Harry needed to do was get the attention of one of them… all Karkaroff had to do was make one mistake and draw too near them…

Karkaroff waved his wand. "You can hear them, but they won't hear us," he said confidently. "And they won't happen upon us, either, even if the disillusionment charm doesn't hold. We're behind one of the blast-ended skrewts. That'll have been the first thing they put in the maze- couldn't very well bring it past the other obstacles if they didn't want to lose an incredibly valuable sphinx. I can't fathom why Albus Dumbledore gives that oaf Hagrid such free rein, but I'm glad he does."

The insult to Hagrid made Harry struggle against his invisible bonds with renewed energy, but to no avail.

"They think the skrewts and and sphinx are the most dangerous obstacles in the maze, but they're wrong. The most dangerous obstacle, Harry, is you. When Cedric Diggory reaches this point, you will kill him."

 _No_ , thought Harry. _No, I won't._ He didn't care what kind of magic Karkaroff was using against him. He wasn't going to kill Cedric. And Cedric was strong and clever. Cedric wouldn't fall so easily.

(He tried not to remember how simple it was to disarm Cedric, so simple that Lupin usually forbade Harry to cast _Expelliarmus_ when Harry and Cedric sparred.)

"And once Diggory's dead," Karkaroff continued, madness flaring in his eyes, "everyone will see the great and good Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, as a selfish, spoiled, dangerous egomaniac who perhaps wants to be a dark lord himself. You won't have the credibility or the universal popularity to do things like weigh the scales of justice in favor of Sirius Black so he can eliminate the Dark Lord's true followers like Barty Crouch, Junior, and Peter Pettigrew. Of course, I've observed you enough to know you're not nearly clever enough to have written that letter in the _Daily Prophet_ yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if Dumbledore wrote it."

Karkaroff spun around, looking more than pleased with himself. "Diggory's death will damn Dumbledore as well as you, of course. He's always been so supportive of you. Severus Snape is an old acquaintance of mine, and he's told me all about it. How Dumbledore made sure your godfather got a trial this time by not calling the Ministry immediately, as he would have done for any other escaped prisoner. How he protected you when half the school thought that you were the Heir of Slytherin, as if you could have been. How he couldn't even bear to see you lose a contest as meaningless as the House championship, so he awarded hundreds of points to you and your friends at the final feast of the year. Yes, Dumbledore has been grooming you for something, and I suppose he'll just have to find another way. The smug, sanctimonious, self-righteous- well," Karkaroff concluded. "I need to be seen this morning with my champion. The champion, I suppose. With Diggory out of the way, Viktor won't even be challenged before he takes the cup."

The wall of the maze vanished again. Karkaroff stepped through it before allowing it to reform.

"Enjoy your last few hours as a boy who hasn't murdered his friend on a grand stage," Karkaroff whispered before his quiet footsteps retreated.

* * *

Harry did not enjoy the next few hours.

He took everything he'd learned about the Imperius Curse and tried to apply it to removing the invisible binds from his body and the ridiculous crown from his head.

He remembered the times in his early childhood when, without knowing what he was doing, he had used magic to escape Dudley or make his hair grow. Surely desperate, terrified magic could make the crown detach itself?

Nothing worked.

He tried harder and harder as he heard the stands begin to fill. The air was full of excited voices and the rumbling of feet. The sky was a deep, clear blue.

Soon enough, Harry heard Ludo Bagman's magically magnified voice.

_"Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament is about to begin! Let me remind you how the points currently stand! Tied in first place, with eighty-five points each- Mr. Cedric Diggory of Hogwarts School and Mr. Viktor Krum of Durmstrang Institute!" The cheers and applause sent birds from the Forbidden Forest fluttering into the sky. "And in third place- Miss Fleur Delacour, of Beauxbatons Academy! So on my whistle, Cedric and Viktor!"_

There was a short blast of a whistle.

Harry hoped as hard as he had ever hoped for anything that Cedric would be stopped before he could reach this point. He didn't care how. Cedric could get lost in the tall hedges. The sphinx could offer Cedric a riddle that Cedric wouldn't be able to answer. Cedric could sustain a nasty burn from one of the skrewts that wouldn't threaten his life, but could prompt him to remove himself from the contest.

There was another blast of a whistle as Fleur entered the maze, far behind Cedric and Krum.

Or nothing could happen to Cedric, but Krum could outrun him, Harry reflected. Krum was very talented; Harry had seen that first-hand. Karkaroff and his crown wouldn't use Harry to harm Krum.

But it was not to be. When footsteps finally entered Harry's corridor, he knew before he saw the approaching figure that it had to be Cedric. Fleur's steps were lighter and more graceful; Krum's had a strange pigeon-toed slouchiness.

A blast of heat washed over Harry. The disillusionment charm was gone. He stepped, unwillingly, into Cedric's path.

Cedric stopped short but kept his wand raised. "Harry?" he asked. "Is that you?"

"It's me," said Harry, and he didn't know whether he was speaking or the crown was speaking.

"Would you kindly step out of my way so I can finish the race, and then we'll talk after the celebration?"

Harry tried to step out of the way. The crown held him fast.

"That's the crown I saw you wearing before," said Cedric pleasantly, almost as if he were speaking to a small child. It was the tone of voice Lupin sometimes took when he was challenged. Cedric had learned a great deal in their private lessons this year, it seemed. "The crown the Merpeople said they didn't see. Would you take it off?"

Harry would have liked nothing better.

"I'm going to stun you," Cedric decided. "I think you're Harry, but I don't know. We'll deal with this when the race is over. My apologies if this hurts you. _Stupefy_ !"

Harry raised his shield charm unwillingly. The stunning spell bounced harmlessly aside. " _Expelliarmus_ !"

This time, of all times, Cedric was ready. He blocked the spell and sent another at Harry, and soon they were sparring just as they often did in practice.

Cedric was a good opponent, but Cedric was tired and Cedric didn't have the crown that seemed to know everything about everything. The third time Harry tried to disarm Cedric, Cedric lost his wand and fell to the ground.

Harry stood over him. (Harry didn't want to stand over him.)

Harry raised his wand. (Harry didn't want to raise his wand.)

Harry opened his mouth. (Harry didn't want to open his mouth.)

" _Avada_ -"

_**To be continued** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: A few direct quotes from Goblet of Fire when the stands fill up and Bagman announces the champions. A few direct quotes from Order of the Phoenix when Ginny describes being possessed.


	45. Harry and the Legilimens

" _Expelliarmus_ !"

Harry had never been so pleased to be disarmed from behind in his life. He fell to the ground and lay still. He couldn't move and he couldn't talk, and that was fine with him.

"Vot is going on?" demanded Krum. "Vhy is your own schoolmate attempting to kill you?"

"I don't know," said Cedric, brushing his sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes.

"I thought- despite his fame- that he was all right," said Krum. "That night that ve all flew together. I like to think that anyone who flies like that is a good person, even though I know that is not how it vorks."

"I like to think the same," said Cedric.

"And Herm-own-ninny, I respect her, and she loves him. She loves him as a brother, she says. She is too smart to love someone who vould-" Krum gestured aimlessly with Harry's wand before stowing it in his robes.

"I think it's the crown," said Cedric. "I think we should take it off of his head."

"Is that the same crown you saw in the second task?" asked Krum.

"It is," said Cedric. He pointed his wand. " _Accio_ !" Nothing happened. "A sticking charm?" he wondered aloud. " _Finite incantantem!_ "

The crown remained tightly on Harry's head.

" _Puskane_ !" cried Krum.

The crown untangled itself from Harry's hair.

"That ends a favorite incantation of Karkaroff's," Krum explained. "Not a normal sticking charm. Easily broken, but only by those who recognize it. I don't think most English-speaking wizards vould."

Harry didn't care about how different countries or different languages had different magic. He cared that the crown wasn't touching him anymore. He cared about the burning in his eyes and throat as he looked at Cedric.

"I'm sorry, Cedric," he said. His voice cracked painfully. His mouth was dry.

Krum casually conjured a glass and filled it with water. Harry accepted it gratefully.

"Send up red sparks and then move on?" Krum suggested to Cedric.

"You move on," Cedric told Krum. "There's something about that crown. I don't want to do anything else until I've put it in Dumbledore's hands, personally."

"It was held by Karkaroff's favorite spell," said Krum. "I vill stay vith you. Ve vill both return later, if it comes to that."

They exchanged a nod of agreement over Harry's head. Cedric picked up the crown, and Krum lowered himself so that he could pull Harry's arm over his sloping shoulders.

" _Vermillious_ !" Krum and Cedric shouted together, and suddenly a shower of red sparks surrounded them.

The hedge beside them vanished to reveal Professor McGonagall. "Diggory! Krum! What's going on? You both look quite well enough to- Potter! What are you doing?"

Harry didn't know what to say. "We would like to speak to Professor Dumbledore, please," said Cedric politely.

"And to Karkaroff," growled Krum somewhat less politely.

"You may both forfeit your chances to win the competition unless you return to the maze now," McGonagall told them. "I'll deal with Potter."

"Ve vill take our chances vith forfeiting the tournament," said Krum. "Ve haff decided."

"Very well," agreed McGonagall, and she led them briskly around the side of the maze to the stands. The crowd in the stands was muttering discontentedly. Some were booing.

The judges left their table together. "Viktor! What is the meaning of this?" bellowed Karkaroff.

"Professor Dumbledore!" called Cedric, ignoring everyone else. "I told you I saw a crown in the lake. This is it. It was making Harry- making Harry do things I know Harry would never do."

Harry was grateful that Cedric hadn't told the whole world that Harry had been a breath away from casting the killing curse. Cedric had nearly died, but at the moment that did not appear to be Cedric's chief concern.

Even without knowing what Harry had done, Dumbledore looked as alarmed as Harry had ever seen him. "That is not a crown, Mr. Diggory," said Dumbledore with a level voice that belied the lines of stress on his face. He took the crown from Cedric's hand and weighed it in his own. "This, I believe, is the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw. It is a powerful magical object, and of course dangerous if used incorrectly. Mr. Potter, where did you come across this?"

It took all of Harry's strength to point at Karkaroff. "Karkaroff put it on me. He said he wanted me to kill Cedric."

Everyone began talking at once. Karkaroff was demanding an apology. Ludo Bagman was suggesting that Harry must be honestly mistaken. Whatever Madame Maxime said, it was in French and Harry was too tired to guess at what it might have meant. Percy Weasley, still acting for his imprisoned former supervisor, suggested that Cedric and Viktor should both return to the maze, rules were rules.

Into the melee charged Ginny. Dumbledore perhaps would not have expected her to slip under his arm and seize the diadem, which may have been how he came to let it go before Ginny was in Karkaroff's arms with his wand at her throat.

"If you attempt to stop me, the girl will die," he declared.

"Now, Igor," began Dumbledore, as if it were possible to reason with Karkaroff.

In an instant, Karkaroff had entered the maze along with Ginny.

"She's under the Imperius Curse," said Harry. He wasn't sure anyone heard him.

Dumbledore was doing so many things at once that Harry couldn't follow them. He attempted to summon the diadem; this, disappointingly, did not work any better for him than it had worked for Cedric or Harry. He sent one set of instructions to the professors and another to a man Harry knew was Rufus Scrimgeour. Yellow-eyed, tawny-haired, and generally lionlike, Scrimgeour was the Head of the Auror Office who sat in on the Ravenclaw anti-Imperius lessons.

"You need to recover the diadem," Dumbledore told Scrimgeour. "It cannot be summoned. It is valuable, it is dangerous, and it has probably been modified using extremely powerful dark magic. Prioritize its return over Karkaroff's capture, although I won't be upset if your people can do both."

Scrimgeour nodded, and used some sort of magic to summon other Aurors to his side.

Over this confusing, noisy backdrop, a klaxon wailed.

Against all odds, Fleur Delacour had won the Triwizard Tournament while Krum and Cedric were otherwise occupied.

* * *

A hard hand fastened around Harry's shoulder.

"Yes, Severus," said Dumbledore. "Take him."

"Take me where?" Harry demanded. Snape might not want Harry to murder Cedric, but Snape definitely liked Harry even less than Karkaroff did. "They're friends!" Harry tried to yell. "Snape and Karkaroff, they're friends!" He struggled against Snape, but Snape was stronger.

He saw Sirius and Lupin detach themselves from the throng, but Snape sent a spell at them and Dumbledore sent another, and then Harry was alone with Snape back inside the nearly-empty castle.

Harry didn't know quite where Snape took him. It was a room he had never seen before that seemed to be hidden behind the Great Hall.

Snape raised his wand and locked eyes with Harry, and Harry felt his mind shatter.

_He was in Lupin's office. Karkaroff wearing the diadem and gazing rapturously into nothing. Karkaroff fairly glowed._

_"Yes," Karkaroff whispered to no one. "Yes, of course. Of course. Yes, my lord. You are wise, you are right, you are forgiving. I will keep him for you. I will use him for you. Right under Dumbledore's crooked old nose."_

_He gave his wand a wave. An exact duplicate of the diadem appeared in his hand. He replaced it in the drawer from which Harry had taken it. "I don't think Lupin and Black will notice a difference, do you?" he asked Harry conversationally. "I don't think they knew exactly what they had." He laughed an arrogant, happy laugh. "I was so silly to think it was me they were after. They were never after me at all. Now, we'd best be out of here before Severus lets Lupin go. I don't know whether he thought he was protecting Lupin or me, but it certainly worked out well, didn't it?"_

_Karkaroff unlocked the door and put everything in Lupin's office and private rooms to rights. Next, he floated Harry to his feet. Harry's wand and invisibility cloak stowed themselves in Harry's bag; the bag looped itself over Harry's shoulder._

_"I never was skilled at disillusionment charms," said Karkaroff. "Who knew there was so much knowledge to be found in a silly crown? Who but the Dark Lord? But off we go."_

Snape pulled back, breathing heavily.

"Did you put that memory there?" asked Harry.

"No," said Snape. "That is not how memories work. I am breaking a memory charm. Now, for once in your life, be quiet."

_Harry was near the Forbidden Forest with Karkaroff and Zacharias Smith._

_"But I just saw you at the judge's table," said Harry._

_"And you'd likely see this young Hogwarts student with his friends if you looked. Wonderful thing, polyjuice potion, don't you agree? Poliakoff knows he's to give a ten to Viktor no matter what, and lower scores to the other two. Even he can manage that. I'll erase his memory, and Ganev's-" here he clapped the impostor Zacharias on the back- "this evening."_

_"And what about me?" demanded Harry. "What do you want with me?"_

_"So many things." Karkaroff's mouth curled into an ugly grin. "Wouldn't it be embarrassing for Dumbledore if the Boy Who Lived was caught stowing away on the Hogwarts champion's dragon? The fame obviously went to the boy's head- he couldn't take seeing someone else get the glory."_

_"No one would believe that!" snapped Harry._

_"Dumbledore and Potter, publicly disgraced and discredited when the Hogwarts champion dies thanks to Potter's actions," Karkaroff continued. "When the Dark Lord arises this summer, no one will want to throw his lot in with either one… We will kill the spare, but I shan't take your life now, your life belongs to the Dark Lord… he has told me, through a piece of himself left behind he has told me…"_

_Harry moved as if to climb onto a dragon's back, then he stopped._

_"No!" he shouted. "The Imperius Curse doesn't work on me, Karkaroff!"_

Harry's knees buckled. Snape shoved him into a chair.

"You and Karkaroff are friends!" Harry objected again.

"Acquaintances. Not friends."

Harry didn't believe him.

Snape began to attack Harry's mind a third time.

A series of memories whirled through Harry's brain. He was raising his wand to kill Cedric; he was opening the Chamber of Secrets; he was fighting to protect the Philosopher's Stone; he was jumping on the back of a troll in a girls' toilet; he was running from Dudley's gang and ending up on the roof of the school; he was casting the Patronus Charm, knowing that he had a godfather who wanted him; he was staring at someone else's memory of his mother singing him a Welsh lullaby.

"I don't see any other obvious memory charms," said Snape. "How many blank spaces do you feel in your memory?"

There had been two, and Snape had done something to fill in the blanks. But Harry wasn't going to tell Snape anything. The memories Snape had looked at had been none of his business- especially the last one, when he'd seen his mother through Lupin's eyes.

"Fine," said Snape, and he yanked Harry back to his feet. "You'll answer for Dumbledore if you won't answer for me. "You are aware, perhaps, that Mr. Diggory's near-death experience can be laid directly at the feet of your precious Professor Lupin? I will enjoy watching him be sacked at last, and I will enjoy it even more if it happens in front of you."

Left to his own thoughts as they walked to Dumbledore's office, Harry tried to understand what Snape had said. It was temping to relish the feeling of his memories being whole again, to be relieved that his body was his own again, to give in to exhaustion and gratitude that Cedric had lost the Tournament but not his life.

But he couldn't let his mind go like that, not yet.

Dumbledore and Sirius arrived at the office just as Harry and Snape did.

"Harry!" Sirius exclaimed, and he wrenched Harry rather painfully from Snape's grip. Snape stepped back, distaste radiating from his every pore.

Harry leaned against Sirius, feeling too exhausted to stand on his own. Attacks on his mind were always more tiring than attacks on his body. "Ginny?" he asked Sirius. "What happened to Ginny?"

"She's fine. Karkaroff let go of her as soon as he jumped into the maze."

"He put her under the Imperius Curse this morning."

"I know. She's not under it now. She's in the hospital wing and her mother is on her way."

Harry gulped. He hoped that they weren't going to send him to the Hospital Wing. He didn't think he could face Mrs. Weasley. He didn't want to explain that he had put Ginny in danger.

Sirius helped Harry settle into a chair and knelt by Harry's side, close and protective. "I am so sorry, Harry," said Sirius.

"For what?"

"I might've known you were a part of it," glowered Snape. "You and your pet werewolf never were ones to do anything on your own. It's amazing how two idiots put together can somehow be even more abysmally stupid than one idiot alone."

 _"What are you talking about?"_ demanded Harry.

"Calm down, Harry," said Dumbledore quietly. "And you as well, Sirius and Severus. I would prefer that we all set an example for our student."

Sirius and Snape glared at each other. It was impossible to tell which face held more loathing.

The door opened again to admit Lupin. In Lupin's hand was a crown- no, a diadem, Dumbledore had called it. Wordlessly, Lupin handed the diadem to Dumbledore.

"A remarkable copy," said Dumbledore, weighing it in his hands. "Where did you get this, Remus?"

"Yes, _Remus_ ," echoed Snape. "Are you going to tell him, or shall I? I've broken through the memory charms that Karkaroff placed on Potter, so I daresay I'll be able to explain just as accurately as you."

"Everyone will speak," Dumbledore decreed. "Remus and Severus, sit down."

Both professors obeyed.

"Harry first," said Dumbledore gently. "Tell us what happened to you today."

"I- I think I should start with what happened last night," Harry said.

"You know best."

Harry told them everything that had happened after he had left Cedric's final lesson. He told them about the strange things that had happened that year and his fear that he had been possessed.

"Why didn't you-" Sirius began, but Dumbledore held up a hand to silence him, and Harry was grateful.

Harry told them what Ginny had said, and about waking up to the sight of the diadem. He told them about running outside with Ginny and seeing Karkaroff. He told them what Karkaroff had done to Ginny and what he had wanted to do to Cedric. He told them how he had not been in control of himself when the diadem had been affixed to his head, and how only Viktor Krum had known how to remove it.

"Very good. Thank you, Harry. Now, Severus, tell us what you saw when you broke the memory charms."

Snape described, with what Harry was forced to admit was real accuracy, what had happened in Lupin's office and just before the first task.

Then Snape's dark eyes fixed themselves on Lupin. "You found an artifact that had been lost to the school for generations, and yet you did not turn it in to the Headmaster. I won't try to fathom why. Happily, the way a werewolf's mind works is beyond me. Perhaps you thought it would make you intelligent enough to be qualified for your post. Perhaps you thought it would teach you how to be a human instead of a monster. Perhaps-"

Lupin was listening silently, absorbing Snape's words, but Sirius jumped to his feet, wand drawn. "Perhaps you should take that fake diadem, _Snivellus_ , and shove it up your-"

_"Sirius and Severus, you will conduct yourselves with civility in my office!"_

Harry's heart pounded at the warning tone in Dumbledore's voice. Sirius reluctantly knelt at Harry's side again, but the expression on his face was still mutinous. Snape's face remained twisted with loathing.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Headmaster," continued Snape with a deferential incline of his head, "this is but the most recent occasion upon which Professor Lupin has placed the school and its students in danger. He has a most unfortunate habit of neglecting to tell you things that you ought to know. He broke your trust when he was a student and he failed to confine himself to the Shrieking Shack. He broke your trust last year when he failed to tell you that the infamous escaped prisoner was an unregistered animagus and able to hide from the authorities for that reason. He broke your trust when he chose not to tell you that he had come into possession of Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, and I don't imagine he has told you how he happened to break the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position?"

"Remus needn't explain about the Defense position, Severus," said Dumbledore. "I believe I know what happened, and what's more I believe that Remus doesn't know."

Harry watched as Sirius and Lupin looked at each other with unconcealed horror on their faces.

Then Dumbledore laughed.

"It's not so terrible as all that, I shouldn't think. I noticed, Sirius, that you went to great pains during your trial last year to leave Remus' name not just out of the story of how you captured Peter Pettigrew, but the story of why you became an animagus."

"Because his particular style of cavorting with werewolves is also a crime, or have you forgotten about the time that they attempted to kill me?"

"My memory is as good as it ever was, Severus. I think it is abundantly clear that Sirius was trying to protect Remus' reputation even with his own life- his own freedom- no less than his own soul hanging in the balance. Is that correct, Sirius?"

Sirius didn't answer, so Harry answered for him. "He was. He told me."

"Thank you, Harry. As I expected. Meanwhile, Remus took every measure in his power to see Sirius kept alive and free, even with the full expectation that his actions would cost him the job that he loves, and that he never takes for granted, having spent most of his life forced to the fringes of society by an illness that is not within his control."

Harry didn't understand what Dumbledore was trying to say, but none of the others appeared to understand either.

"It is always, always Lord Voldemort's greatest weakness. He is always undone by gestures of selfless love, whether it be the love of a mother who throws herself between her son and a killing curse, or the love of two old friends whose deepest instinct is to protect one another, no matter the cost."

Sirius and Lupin were now looking everywhere but at one another. Snape, on the other hand, looked as if he might be sick on the spot.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, looked nothing but pleased by the ensuing silence. "We do, of course, need to discuss what Remus knows and how. But we have kept Harry here for too long when he is in desperate need of rest. So, Sirius, please take your godson to the hospital wing."

"No," said Harry and Sirius in unison.

"Go," said Lupin quietly. "Harry, don't you want to see Ginny for yourself?" He did, but not as much as he wanted- needed- to know what was going on in this room. "And Sirius, you can't let Harry out of your sight right now. The Headmaster is right. He needs his rest."

"Are you going to?" Sirius asked Lupin.

Harry didn't think that the question made much sense, but Lupin seemed to understand it. "Everything," said Lupin.

"Very well." Sirius helped Harry back to his feet. They were half a step to the door when Harry turned to Dumbledore and Snape. "You should be aware that I know everything Remus does, and more, such as where another object like the diadem happens to be concealed. I won't be sharing any of that knowledge with you if anything unpleasant befalls Moony after I leave this room."

"I'm sure _Moony_ can take care of himself," sneered Snape. "Although apparently he can't acquire an adult's name. Perhaps it has to do with the power of _love_ ."

"Or perhaps you could try having a friend before you dismiss the entire concept of friendship as beneath you," returned Sirius. "But perhaps not, as you sent Voldemort to kill the last true friend you ever had."

Sirius slammed the door on Snape's outraged scream and the explosive crackle of a hex.

Harry clung dizzily to Sirius' robes, forced to admit that he badly needed the hospital wing after all.

**_To be continued._ **


	46. The Explanation

Sirius' final words hadn't been kind or helpful.

They had been _true_ , but they hadn't been kind or helpful.

Remus found that he didn't care very much. Absent the distraction of Sirius and Harry, his thoughts turned to the other person whose safety was a constant source of concern to him: Dora.

Dumbledore had sent Dora and the other Aurors in pursuit of a crazed, dangerous Karkaroff and an incredibly powerful dark object. Remus was the sole reason that Karkaroff was panicking and taking children hostage. Remus was the sole reason that the diadem wasn't safely hidden in the Room of Requirement. Remus was the sole reason Dora had been stationed at Hogwarts to begin with.

Dora was currently in mortal peril, and Remus had no one to blame but himself.

Snape was, of course, shouting at Remus, who was the only target remaining in the room. "Tell me, Lupin, do you have any regret that multiple students have been placed under the Imperius Curse, the death of Cedric Diggory was only narrowly avoided through sheer dumb luck, and even now Aurors are risking their lives attempting to retrieve an extremely powerful object that you could have brought to the Headmaster for destruction months ago?"

Dumbledore made a move to intervene, but Remus didn't need or want Dumbledore's protection. "Yes, Severus, I regret all of that."

"Have you any explanation at all as to why you did not bring the diadem to the Headmaster?"

"Indeed I do." Remus looked Snape straight in the eye. "I didn't tell the Headmaster because I believed that the Headmaster would, in turn, tell you."

" _Remus_ !" At any time in Remus' first life, the one-word scolding would have made him feel eleven years old again. At any time in Remus' first life, he would have bowed his head in shame, his mind a whirlwind of self-loathing as he admitted to betraying and disappointing the man who had given him multiple chances in a world that intended him to have none.

This wasn't his first go at life.

"Remus, I expect this from Sirius, and, alas, sometimes from Severus as well, but I thought that you were willing to put schoolboy grudges in the past and recognize that we must all work together to ensure that the students at this school graduate into a better world than the one that was inflicted on all of you."

"That is exactly why I don't trust Severus, Headmaster." Remus was pleased to find that the words came easily and his voice was steady. He had hoped that this moment would never come; he had also been waiting for this moment for almost two years. "I regret the way I conducted myself as a schoolboy. James and Sirius were petty and cruel and I condoned their behavior because I couldn't believe my good fortune that they were my friends. But James and Sirius did not join the Death Eaters. James and Sirius did not overhear a prophecy that a child yet to be born would defeat Lord Voldemort, and they did not gleefully repeat that prophecy to Lord Voldemort so that he could just as gleefully attempt to murder an infant. I respect your decision to believe that Severus has repented, but I cannot agree with it."

Dumbledore's usually-twinkling blue eyes stilled.

It was terrifying.

Remus didn't care.

He despised himself for losing the diadem. He despised himself for causing pain to Cedric, and to Ginny, and above all to Harry. He was sick with fear for Dora. He knew that fate and magic had a funny way of evening things out, and he knew that if Dora died today, it would be entirely his fault.

What was Dumbledore's disapproval next to that?

"How," said Dumbledore, "do you know about that prophecy?"

That, at least, was simple. "James told Sirius and Sirius told me. Long after the fact, of course. I didn't know why precisely Lily and James went into hiding at the time."

"James and Lily promised me that that would not share the prophecy. For Harry's own privacy."

"In all the years that I knew James and Sirius, I never knew them to have a secret between them. James all but considered Sirius an extension of himself. Telling one was the same as telling both."

"Yes, I suppose that was always so. That does not explain how you know how-"

"Headmaster!" injected Snape.

"Severus," said Dumbledore wearily. "He knows. We are not in danger of confirming anything he does not already know."

"What passed between us is none of his concern," said Snape, and an emotion Remus couldn't name thickened the air in the room.

"And yet it does concern me," said Remus. "It concerned me so much that I hid the Horcrux because I believed that you were merely biding your time until you could murder the Headmaster and take over the school for Lord Voldemort."

A few seconds passed in silence. The genuine confusion on Snape's face sent a fresh wave of fear down Remus' spine.

Remus hadn't been wrong. He'd lived through it all.

He hadn't been wrong.

But why would Snape look confused?

"He's mad," said Snape to Dumbledore, and his voice was devoid of the petulant anger that usually lingered there when he described Remus' alleged mental state. "I don't know whether it's the diadem or something else, but he's mad."

"Did you ever put the diadem on your head, Remus?" asked Dumbledore gently.

"He mightn't remember if he had. We've already had one demonstration of Karkaroff's skill with a memory charm, and he's hardly the only wizard capable of such a thing. Gilderoy Lockhart barely knew which end of his wand to hold, but when it came to memory charms-"

"I'm quite familiar with the phenomenon," agreed Dumbledore.

"You need to look into his mind. I'd do it, but he's more likely to fight me."

"Very restrained of you, Severus," said Remus, who was quickly tiring of being discussed as if he were not present. He pointed at the Pensieve that was peeking out of a cabinet filled with all manner of magical objects. "I'll show you both. I would, of course, prefer privacy, but I know that expecting Dumbledore not to share with you would be just as fruitless as expecting James not to share with Sirius."

Dumbledore rose and placed the Pensieve in front of Remus. "You're incorrect about my ability to keep a confidence, Remus. But as you have offered to show us both, you may show us both."

Remus raised his wand to his head. He'd done this before, with Sirius; he could certainly do it again.

The strand of memory from the future-past drifted mistily into the bowl. Snape and Dumbledore stepped forward.

_Bill Weasley lay in a hospital bed, his face so badly slashed and ripped that he looked grotesque. Madam Pomfrey was dabbing fruitlessly at his wounds with green ointment._

_"Dumbledore might know something that'd work," Ron said. "Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on Dumbledore's orders. Dumbledore owes him, he can't leave him in this state-"_

_"Ron- Dumbledore's dead," said Ginny._

_"No!" Remus looked wildly from Ginny to Harry, hoping that Harry might contradict his girlfriend, but Harry did not. Remus collapsed into a chair beside Bill's bed, his hands over his face._

He had been embarrassed at the time- embarrassed to lose control in front of the students, in front of the Order members. It mattered less now. It mattered not what Snape or Dumbledore thought of whether he mourned, or how he mourned.

It mattered that a wholesale slaughter be avoided.

It mattered that Cedric Diggory was alive.

It mattered that Sirius and Harry were safe in the castle.

It mattered that Dora was chasing a crazed Death Eater.

_"How did he die?" whispered Dora. "How did it happen?"_

_"Snape killed him," said Harry. "I was there, I saw it. We arrived back on the Astronomy Tower because that's where the Mark was. Dumbledore was ill, he was weak, but I think he realized it was a trap when we heard footsteps running up the stairs. He immobilized me. I couldn't do anything. I was under the Invisibility Cloak. And then Malfoy came through the door and disarmed him- more Death Eaters arrived- and then Snape- and Snape did it. The Avada Kedavra."_

_Harry couldn't go on. Madam Pomfrey burst into tears which were drowned out by the unmistakeable sound of a phoenix singing its last lament._

Dumbledore's head jerked up sharply, as if the phoenix song told him something that the images of Bill, Harry, Ginny, Ron, Remus, Dora, and Madam Pomfrey looking bloody and battle-worn did not.

_Professor McGonagall entered the room. Like the rest, she bore marks of the recent battle: There were grazes on her face and her robes were ripped. "Harry, what happened? According to Hagrid, you were with Professor Dumbledore when he- when it happened. He says Professor Snape was involved in some-"_

_"Snape killed Dumbledore," said Harry._

_She stared at him for a moment, then swayed alarmingly. Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have pulled herself together, ran forward, conjuring a chair from thin air, which she then pushed under McGonagall._

_"Snape," repeated McGonagall faintly, falling into the chair. "We all wondered… but he trusted… always… Snape… I can't believe it."_

_"Snape was a highly accomplished Occlumens," said Remus. "We always knew that."_

_"But Dumbledore swore he was on our side!" whispered Dora. "I always thought Dumbledore must know something about Snape that we didn't._

_"He always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape," muttered Professor McGonagall, now dabbing at the corners of her leaking eyes with a tartan-edged handkerchief. "I mean… with Snape's history… of course people were bound to wonder… but Dumbledore told me explicitly that Snape's repentance was absolutely genuine… Wouldn't hear a word against him!"_

_"I'd love to know what Snape told him to convince him," said Dora._

_"I know," said Harry, and Remus turned with the others to look at him. "Snape passed Voldemort the information that made Voldemort hunt down my mum and dad. Then Snape told Dumbledore he hadn't realized what he was doing, he was really sorry he'd done it, sorry that they were dead."_

_Remus stared at Harry in disbelief. "And Dumbledore believed that?" he asked incredulously. "Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead? Snape hated James…"_

Remus stepped back from the Pensieve and tried not to look as insolent as he felt.

The flash of doubt that had crossed Remus' mind when he'd seen confusion on Snape's face was gone now. The grief and hopelessness of the night of Dumbledore's death returned to him in full force.

It felt like a violation to show Snape the tears that had been shed for Dumbledore. It felt like a violation to let Snape know just how well his plan to convince Dumbledore, and depend upon everyone else to defer to Dumbledore's judgment, might have worked. At the same time, showing the memory to Dumbledore and the man Dumbledore most trusted was freeing. There would be no more pretending that he believed for a second that there was anything good inside Severus Snape. There would be no more pretending that James' and Sirius' boyhood sniping somehow justified Snape's behavior as an adult.

"What was that?" asked Dumbledore quietly.

"A memory," said Remus, just as quietly.

"I think you understand that it cannot be a memory. In those images, I was dead; happily, I am quite alive in the present."

"I agree," said Remus. "I much prefer you alive."

"Why would you go to the trouble of modifying a memory so perfectly?" asked Snape with something almost like amazement. "Even the smallest change to a memory is a painstakingly difficult and time-consuming undertaking."

"He can't have modified the memory," Dumbledore concluded. "That would be-forgive me, Remus- far beyond his capabilities."

"A hallucination?" guessed Snape. "Not- not a prophecy."

"You know as well as I what a genuine prophecy looks like, Severus."

"I can show you more, if you remain unconvinced," said Remus politely. "The Headmaster's funeral. The speeches were rather long, and the centaurs did terrify a number of the mourners by shooting arrows toward the tomb, but overall it was quite moving."

"Another time," said Dumbledore.

"I know," said Remus with a viciousness that he didn't like to hear in his own voice. "I'll show you Severus nearly killing George Weasley. You see, to get Harry out of his aunt and uncle's house with the Ministry about to fall to Voldemort, we used decoys. Six of Harry's friends drank polyjuice potion so Voldemort wouldn't know who to try to kill first. I had George with me. Look."

The memory came easily to his wand; it was one that had never stayed far from the forefront of his mind, no matter how pleasant the past two years had often been.

_The fourteen of them took off into an immediate ambush. Voldemort flew directly at Mad-Eye Moody, prompting Mundungus-as-Harry to undo any respect he was owed for proposing the decoys by Disapparating. Voldemort switched his attention to Kingsley and Hermione; Bellatrix, of course, was chasing Dora and Ron._

_Just as Bellatrix sought her oldest and most personal enemy, so too did Snape. His hood flew off in the chaos as he swooped closer, closer to Remus and George, and he'd shouted the curse that had always been his particular favorite- the curse that had prompted Remus and his friends to keep a supply of blood-replenishing potion in their dormitory at Hogwarts._

_"Sectumsempra!"_

_Remus was immediately drenched in blood, and to his horror none of the blood was his. George, always so ready with a quip or a laugh, faded from consciousness and began to slip from the broom._

_Remus had no chance to return Snape's fire. He could only hope to keep flying in the right direction, keep George on the broom, and make a safe landing before George bled to death…_

"It always was your signature spell, wasn't it, Severus? You prided yourself on having invented it."

"That did not happen!" snarled Snape angrily. "That could not happen. Dumbledore, I've been right about Lupin all along. I have told you that he is not to be trusted."

"Or else you hate your own failings when you see them in other people," suggested Remus. "You can't tolerate my neglecting to share vital information with the Headmaster because you do the same thing."

Snape's eyes flashed. "We are not talking about me. I was not the one who elevated Igor Karkaroff's paranoia into desperate madness by having Pettigrew and Crouch thrown in Azkaban, and then proceeded to dangle a dangerous artifact in front of him. You did that, and you will tell us exactly what you knew about Pettigrew and Crouch, and when."

"I won't," said Remus, and he meant it. He'd told Sirius that he intended to tell Dumbledore everything, but now that he had relived Dumbledore's death and George's maiming, he felt again that he had made the right choice in the first place. Dumbledore couldn't know the truth because Snape couldn't know the truth. "I won't, and I've told you why I won't. I won't because I know that you are a Death Eater and I know that the Headmaster is a brilliant man with a blind spot exactly where you reside. The brighter the man, the larger the consequences when he makes a rare error, I suppose."

Dumbledore didn't say anything. His gaze swept appraisingly over Remus. Remus braced himself for a mental attack- not that he could do anything to protect himself if Dumbledore decided to force the matter- but he didn't feel even the faintest whisper of Legilimency.

After an excruciatingly long moment, Dumbledore turned to Snape. "I suggest, Severus, that you consider telling Remus why I trust you so completely."

"Absolutely not! It was always my one condition, Dumbledore, and it remains so."

"If you wish for me to conceal the best of you, that is your decision- albeit it one I have never entirely understood. But our shared goal may be in danger because my trust in you has led Remus to conclude that I am an addle-minded old fool."

"That's not-" Remus injected, but Dumbledore dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

"Severus, can you think of a better way to achieve our desired ends than to convince Remus to cooperate with us in regards to the information he has in his possession?"

"I suggest locking him in a dungeon with a cauldron of Veritaserum and a regular diet of Legilimency."

"I believe Mr. Black's parting words were meant to dissuade us from indulging in such a method," said Dumbledore wryly. Remus felt a flash of gratitude for Sirius. Sirius was so clever, and Snape was so clever, and Dumbledore was perhaps the cleverest man who had ever lived. Remus was… wildly overmatched in all of this. "And on the subject of Mr. Black's uninvited commentary, Severus, is your rationale really such a secret?"

"It is the last piece of me that belongs to me alone and I won't do it," answered Snape.

_On the subject of Mr. Black's uninvited commentary…_

Sirius had said something that would have explained Dumbledore's belief in Snape?

_You sent Voldemort to kill the last true friend you ever had._

Of course.

Remus remembered his own words to Harry when they had spoken moments after Dumbledore's death.

_Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead? Snape hated James._

Harry had answered, Remus remembered now.

_And he didn't think my mother was worth a damn, either, because she was Muggle-born… 'Mudblood' he called her…_

It had hardly been the time and place to tell Harry that it had been a bit more complicated than that between Snape and Lily: that Snape and Lily had been childhood friends, that they'd grown up together in the Muggle world, that they'd been inseparable until their fifth year, that when Lily had told Snape that their friendship was over he had threatened to camp outside Gryffindor Tower until she'd seen him. This last had been the talk of the school for the rest of the year.

Remus had been focused, anyway, on James. James who Snape so deeply loathed that he tormented Harry for the sin of being James' child.

But it had never been about James.

It had been about Lily.

Snape hadn't told Dumbledore that he was sorry he had sent Voldemort after James. He had told Dumbledore that he was sorry he had sent Dumbledore after Lily, and that was what Dumbledore had believed.

"You needn't continue to debate the point," Remus told Snape and Dumbledore. "You can tell me that Severus' affection for Lily Evans Potter never died, not even after he joined an organization dedicated to exterminating everyone of her birth, and I still won't accept it."

"Do you consider, Remus," asked Dumbledore quietly, "that what you believe you know of my motives may have been lost in translation when Harry repeated them to you?"

"I do," said Remus. "I ended the memory before you saw Harry's response to me, but he made it plain that he didn't know that there was ever a friendship between Severus and Lily. That colored his perception and the way he chose his words with me. However, I also know that you once told Harry that Severus hated James because James saved his life." In other circumstances, Snape's flinch might have amused Remus. "While that is not technically untrue, it is rather misleading, is it not?"

"I do not apologize for that," said Dumbledore. "It was what truth I believed Harry could handle at the age of eleven. What have you and Sirius told Harry of his past and of his future?"

"I'm not inclined to reveal that."

"But surely you understand how difficult it is to determine what to tell, and when? You have changed your mind several times today about what you wish to tell me, and I am not child."

As usual, Dumbledore was correct. Remus inclined his head respectfully. "Yes, Headmaster."

"You are correct, Remus. I do trust Severus."

"Even after what you just saw?"

"What I saw was Severus aiming for the wand hand of a Death Eater who had a clear shot at your back, Remus. He missed, because quite frankly flying is not his particular strength." Remus stared wordlessly at Dumbledore. "It is understandable that you wouldn't notice it upon first glance, concerned as you were about George. Review it at your leisure, and recall how many people thought they saw Sirius Black murder Peter Pettigrew."

Dumbledore now turned to Snape. "I do trust you, Severus, but I would like you to leave us for a moment." Snape nodded curtly and swept from the room.

"Now," said Dumbledore when he and Remus were alone. "Tell me how you know about Horcruxes. Tell me what you know about Horcruxes."

"It doesn't bother you," asked Remus boldly, "that Severus would never have felt remorse about sending Voldemort to murder a baby if that baby hadn't been Lily's? That he never would have come to you and offered to be your spy if it had been Alice Longbottom who had thrown herself in front of the killing curse for her son?"

"Certainly it bothered me," said Dumbledore, and his tone was so disarmingly causal that Remus almost relaxed. (He wasn't going to relax. He couldn't have relaxed if he'd wanted to. Dora was still in pursuit of a madman. Harry was white and shaking in the Hospital Wing.) "In point of fact, I told him at the time that his behavior disgusted me. He has, however, matured greatly over the years."

"Some of us don't need to mature to decide not to murder babies."

"You were always loved, Remus," said Dumbledore very quietly. "For all of your trials, there has never been a moment when you weren't loved." Remus didn't know how to respond to that. He did remember that Sirius had said the same thing when they'd argued about Harry. "Speaking of which, as a professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, I expect you'll be concerned that I didn't confirm earlier that you are who you say you are. Tell me, Remus, when did you first meet me?"

Remus couldn't help smiling at the memory even under the circumstances. "I was ten years old and my parents and I were sitting in front of the fire. You came to the door and my father- my parents tried to stop you coming in. Of course they failed, and within five minutes you'd plied me with crumpets and a new set of Gobstones."

"You defeated me easily, as I recall."

"You told my parents that you knew what I was and you wanted me to come to school anyway." He would never forget it.

He hadn't forgotten Dumbledore's question, either. "Sirius' family library covers the topic," said Remus, still not quite certain how to explain that he had first heard the word _Horcrux_ from a nameless being in the afterlife which had taken the form of his mother. "We believe that Voldemort's plan was to make six, so that his soul would be split into seven parts altogether. The first was the diary Harry destroyed two years ago. The second was the diadem. The third is a ring Sirius found buried in a shack in Little Hangleton. We believe the fourth is hidden in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts, and we believe that it may be Helga Hufflepuff's cup. The fifth unfortunately remains a mystery to us. Our hope is that Voldemort was planning to make the sixth when he murdered the Potters, but when his spell backfired he inadvertently turned Harry into a Horcrux."

"Your theories are very close to mine. Am I correct in assuming that you have not told Harry?"

"We've told him that the Horcruxes exist. We have not told him that he is a Horcrux."

"So you have not told him that his death is necessary in order to defeat Lord Voldemort."

"I certainly have not told him that, because I don't believe it. I believe that if Lord Voldemort takes Harry's blood to return to his physical body- which he will- and Harry submits to Voldemort's Avada Kedavra- which he will- the Horcrux will be eliminated and Harry will survive."

There was a fleeting look of triumph in Dumbledore's eyes before a tear slid down his cheek.

Remus didn't say anything else. He didn't suppose anything else needed saying.

**_To be continued._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: A lengthy quote from Half-Blood Prince, set off in italics, in this chapter.


	47. Tonks Interlude E

They talked while they ran. Kingsley and Scrimgeour loped along like men who would never tire. Mad-Eye jogged remarkably well for an aging wizard with a prosthetic leg. Tonks, of course, tripped over her own feet four times before they reached the edge of the Hogwarts grounds. The fourth time she tripped, she rolled her ankle. She ignored the pain. A spell would put it right in about ten seconds, but she did not have ten seconds to spare.

"Does any one think he'll do anything but try to get back to Durmstrang?" Scrimgeour demanded. None of them did. Durmstrang's protections were the stuff of legend. Hogwarts looked like a hotel beneath a neon sign welcoming all comers in comparison. "There's a limited number of ways he can do that. The least likely is Muggle transport-"

"No," said Mad-Eye. "It would take too long and he doesn't know enough about Muggles to blend in."

"There's the ship, of course."

"He can't escape in the ship," Kingsley said firmly. "I've heard the students complaining that they do all the work to make it sail. I took a good look after the third time I heard that and I don't think one wizard could get it out of the lake, let alone back to Durmstrang."

"That leaves Apparition and Portkeys. The distance means he'd have to Apparate in at least a dozen stages even without accounting for crossing sovereign borders and avoiding areas where you can't Apparate."

"He'll have set up an emergency illegal Portkey," said Mad-Eye. "It'll be close to the edge of the grounds."

"You and Tonks go left. Shacklebolt and I will go right. Send up sparks the instant you see him, and we'll do the same."

Tonks and Mad-Eye veered off to the left. It would have made the most sense for Karkaroff to turn right; there were more places to hide in that direction. That was why Scrimgeour had chosen the direction for himself and Kingsley. But she ran as hard as she could and looked as hard as she could because all they had were guesses and they might have guessed wrong.

Mad-Eye's magical eye spun wildly in its socket, looking through trees and walls alike. When it stopped spinning, Tonks raised her wand. " _Vermillious Tria!"_ she shouted, knowing without Mad-Eye's needing to say it that they had found Karkaroff.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw red sparks answering her own. Kingsley and Scrimgeour were coming, and all she and Mad-Eye had to do was keep Karkaroff pinned down until they arrived.

Mad-Eye was firing spells so quickly that Tonks couldn't have counted them. All of the spells seemed to be missing their target and returning in their direction doubled in force; Tonks stepped back and cast her strongest Shield Charm around herself and Mad-Eye.

Behind her there were two telltale pops of Apparition. Kingsley and Scrimgeour circled around toward the source of the spells. Kingsley, like Tonks, focused on keeping his Shield Charm strong and nothing more. They were doing this by the book, not just because one of their number was the Head of Aurors but because Karkaroff could not be underestimated.

Spells flew ever more wildly as the four of them inched closer and closer to their target. It was several minutes before Tonks truly saw Karkaroff for the first time.

The crown- the diadem- that had caused so much trouble was balanced garishly on his head. His hair flew out wildly in every direction, and his dark eyes seemed at once too large and too small. Both his fur collar and his beard had been singed by one of Scrimgeour's spells; his garish belt buckle had been severed and knocked to the ground.

He spun in a circle. His wand flashed. He was fighting two experienced Aurors who didn't have to cast their own defensive spells, but he refused to fall. And yet he never so much as attempted to maneuver himself away from them.

The Portkey must be close. She watched and waited for him to move, and when he did it was to reach for what looked like nothing more than an ordinary rock.

"Accio!" she shouted, hoping that the spell had not been blocked.

It hadn't. The rock flew toward her, and Karkaroff followed the rock, and the others fell on Karkaroff and grabbed at the rock as they realized what was happening.

* * *

The Portkey deposited them in a stone corridor. Her sore ankle buckled beneath her and she tumbled to the floor. Mad-Eye, Scrimgeour, and Kingsley managed to keep their feet through the disorientation of a long Portkey trip, but a wave of Karkaroff's wand froze them all in place.

"You understand," said Karkaroff, "that we at Durmstrang do not take kindly to uninvited visitors."

"Considering how you behave when you visit other schools, I'm not surprised," said Mad-Eye. He alone was not struggling against his invisible bonds. Kingsley's and Scrimgeour's efforts were frantic but fruitless. Tonks tentatively tried to move her own legs and found that she could.

The spell had missed her because she'd been on the ground.

It was so very rare that her clumsiness was useful. She grasped her wand and pointed it at Kingsley, who was nearest. _Finite_ , she thought. _FINITE FINITE FINITE!_

It wasn't enough. She ran through her entire vocabulary of counter-spells. Nothing seemed to help.

"I face an unfortunate dilemma," Karkaroff intoned, suddenly seeming the Headmaster patrolling the corridors of his school and not the crazed servant of You-Know-Who wearing a silver diadem atop his disheveled hair. "I need to kill you all, but I don't dislike you all in the same measure. Shacklebolt is downright inoffensive, for example."

"Thank you," said Kingsley so pleasantly that despite the situation, Tonks almost laughed. _Finite Incantantem!_

"On the other hand, killing the great Alastor Moody will give me the greatest joy. Shall I kill him first, to make certain that the deed is done? Or shall I kill him last, so that he will suffer the pain of watching his friends die? I am given to understand that the little pink-haired girl is rather precious to him." He inclined his head toward Tonks. The diadem tipped perilously forward.

She could not count on getting another opportunity this good. The element of surprise was on her side. He did not know that his spell had missed her. She would have to duel him one-on-one instead of four-on-one, but if he lost the advantage of the diadem she liked her chances.

She sprang from the ground and hurled herself at him before he could react. With one hand, she seized the diadem and flung it as far away as possible. With her other hand, she began to cast spell after spell.

"Take care, little girl," snarled Karkaroff. "Even without the diadem, I am not a bad hand at this."

"Nor I, either," she said.

 _"Nor I, either,"_ Karkaroff mocked as they hurled spells at one another. "So proper beneath your punk all of a sudden. You sound almost like your Aunt Bellatrix."

Tonks was too well-trained to allow herself to be distracted by his taunts. Mad-Eye had said worse to her on her first day of training. Scrimgeour had said worse to her when she'd first applied for the position. The personality tests had begun before she had even been accepted into the Auror program.

She sent a rapid and brilliant series of spells toward Karkaroff. He deflected them all. He hadn't lied; he was a good duelist even without the diadem. Nonetheless, she saw an opening in his defenses and sent another spell his way, shouting triumphantly as she did. Kingsley and Mad-Eye cried out, too, and their cheers gave her new strength.

Karkaroff again deflected her spell and smiled wickedly.

You-Know-Who himself would have been envious of such a smile.

A powerful blast of magic nearly knocked her from her feet once more, but she pushed forward and Karkaroff took a step back.

She didn't gloat. She was only relieved that he was losing ground. The advantage would be hers if they moved out of the alcove in which they had appeared and further down the corridor. After all, Karkaroff didn't care whether a stray curse hit one of the three immobilized men. Tonks did. They could not go on fighting in such a small room forever.

Karkaroff took another step back. Tonks sent three quick spells his way- _Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Impedimenta_ \- all of which grazed him, but none of which had the desired effect. Karkaroff's heel was against the wall now.

Tonks was thrown backwards just as the wall gave way and sealed itself behind Karkaroff.

"Up, Tonks!" bellowed Scrimgeour. "The counter-curse you want is _Dilabor_ . Aim your wand at me, then bring it straight down."

She did not need to be told twice. She quickly freed Kingsley while Scrimgeour freed Mad-Eye. "We need to blast open that wall," Tonks said almost before they were mobile again. " _Reducto_ on three. One, two, three!"

" _Reducto_ !" The wall shook and crumbled to reveal a narrow, sloping passageway that smelled of saltwater.

Tonks didn't even realize until the deed was done that she had temporarily seized control of the mission from the Head Auror himself, and that he had allowed her to do it. She had led, and three Aurors very much her senior had followed without question.

"I believe we'll be getting on a Durmstrang ship after all," Scrimgeour concluded. "Kingsley, take the diadem. We won't be coming back for the grand tour."

"Just as well," said Kingsley. "I understand that the grand tour ends with the guests getting Obliviated."

It was funny and Tonks laughed, but she also couldn't help wishing that they had more time to explore. _Durmstrang_ . How many witches educated elsewhere had ever seen it? Oh, but she would have had fun the next time she'd had dinner with Tulip and Ayberk.

* * *

There was too much chance of potentially fatal traps to charge down the hidden passageway at full speed. They had to move slowly and carefully. _Lumos, Protego, Lumos, Protego, Lumos, Protego._ All the while Karkaroff was getting further away.

The passageway grew steeper and damper as they went, but they reached the end without incident.

Water lapped at their boots. A row of ships, all of them miniatures of the vessel currently docked at Hogwarts, stood ready and waiting.

There was no time to marvel at the magic it had taken to create the ships or the beauty of the island (for they were certainly on an island).

Kingsley scooped up a pebble from the ground and tossed it at the nearest ship. It crackled with a lightening-like magic and the pebble burst into flame. These ships did not sail for just anyone.

"Shall we split up?" whispered Mad-Eye.

Scrimgeour looked pained. He wanted to capture Karkaroff just as much as the rest of them did, and they could cover more ground if they separated. Tonks could see, though, that he didn't like the idea of letting any of his Aurors out of his sight in this unknown world. "Not yet," Scrimgeour decided. "It won't do any good. If he's left already, splitting up won't make him any less gone. If he's on one of those ships, we'll know which one when it moves."

And so they waited. Each of them gazed fixedly at an assigned quadrant of ships for what felt like an eternity until Scrimgeour himself whistled softly and pointed. There was a flicker of light in a ship toward the middle of the row.

"Tonks," Scrimgeour ordered. "Morph yourself into a Durmstrang student."

She gave herself longer, darker hair and a rounder, more childish face. Even as she transformed, Scrimgeour was transfiguring her Auror's robes into a decent approximation of the uniform worn by students.

"Go look," Scrimgeour told her. "Try not to be seen. See if it's him, see if he's alone. Signal back to us if we should join you. Don't engage him on your own unless you have an opening so obvious that my cat would be able to stun him."

It was the wrong time to wonder whether Scrimgeour really had a cat, so Tonks didn't wonder about that at all. Instead, she crept toward the ship.

The narrow wooden path was slippery; so too were the rocks beside it. It took everything in her not to fall. As Kingsley had done before her, she scooped up a pebble and tossed it at the ship. This time, there were no sparks. Karkaroff, or someone, had neutralized the spell.

She boarded the ship. It was narrow and dark and had a stale smell. Karkaroff was near the front; he was writing rapidly, an owl at the ready. A thick pane of glass separated him from Tonks. If she threw a blasting curse and an stunner simultaneously, she would have him. Scrimgeour, though, had told her not to.

She crept back the way she had come and sent a small shower of red sparks at the ground where Karkaroff would not see them. _He is alone. Come._

The other three made it to her side just as the ship took off with a jolt.

"Perfect timing," whispered Kingsley.

"Too perfect," returned Mad-Eye, and Tonks was inclined to agree.

"He's steering from a small room in the front. There's a glass barrier between him and us," she explained.

"Do we have an exit strategy if we incapacitate him?" asked Scrimgeour. "I don't know how to drive this ship, and I don't think any of you do, either."

"There's a small rowboat off to the left side. I think we should take that and sail south until we figure out where we are."

Scrimgeour nodded his agreement. "Kingsley, put that boat in the water and get it some distance away. Be ready for a rescue mission. If there's nothing left of us to rescue, return that crown to Dumbledore and congratulate Robards on his promotion to Head of Aurors."

Kingsley obeyed without a word. When the rowboat was some distance from the ship- Kinglsey had charmed it to keep pace from a distance- Tonks, Mad-Eye, and Scrimgeour approached Karkaroff.

Before they could cast a single spell, the sides of the ship seemed to fall in on them. Mad-Eye had been right. The timing had been too perfect. Karkaroff had been waiting for them.

Karkaroff laughed as they blasted aside the wood and stone that pinned them to the deck of the ship. _"Avada Kedavra!"_

He missed Scrimgeour, but only just, because Mad-Eye had hit him in the face with a stinging hex that altered his aim.

Then Karkaroff did something very strange.

He ran.

They heard him shouting " _Incendio_ !" as they struggled to free themselves and follow him.

"He's running for the rowboat," Mad-Eye realized. "He's going to blow up the ship."

The ship rocked.

They didn't wait around to see whether Mad-Eye was right.

Instead, they jumped into the water and swam toward the place where Kingsley ought to have been.

There was a deafening roar and the frigid water flashed the color of fire.

Tonks thought she heard a faint, anguished cry from Karkaroff, but she didn't have time to worry about that. She had to get herself out of the water and make certain that Mad-Eye and Scrimgeour got out, too.

Kingsley steered the small boat around to them and helped them inside, drying their robes with his wand as he did. It was a tight fit inside the boat. Tonks didn't mind at all. She glanced at the sky and tried to calculate their location from the stars.

"I believe I have us headed for Copenhagen," said Kingsley in his deep, reassuring voice. "The Danish Aurors have their office there, and it shouldn't be a problem for them to arrange a Portkey to the Ministry."

Scrimgeour voiced his approval, and for a long moment the four of them sat quietly, alternately scanning the stars to confirm Kingsley's assessment of their course and the water for any sign of Karkaroff.

"It must be done with by now," theorized Scrimgeour. "If the explosion didn't get him, the water will have. It's too cold and rough to swim for long, even with a wand.

" _Moody_ !"

"Karkaroff was never going to die so easily," said Mad-Eye as he recognized the voice. They all turned to see Karkaroff's dark head bobbing in the water about halfway between their rowboat and the place where the Durmstrang ship had sunk.

Kingsley looked to Scrimgeour for direction. Tonks could see the ambivalence on Scrimgeour's face. It would be so easy to let Karkaroff drown, to say it had been too dangerous to try to bring him in alive. Karkaroff alone had made the decision to escape to the water after attacking innocent children; if Karkaroff met his death there, it was only fitting. There would be no international incident. They hadn't taken custody of Karkaroff; they hadn't killed him. He had merely drowned near his own school and his own ship.

"Moody!" Karkaroff pleaded again. "You always brought your man in alive when you could!"

Karkaroff's proclamation snapped Scrimgeour out of his indecision. "Bring the boat around," he instructed Kingsley. Kingsley obeyed before the words had left Scrimgeour's lips.

"Perhaps we can stun him while he's still in the water," Scrimgeour suggested, but as they grew close they saw that waves were passing over Karkaroff's head. Karkaroff choked and gasped. His fur collar bobbed limply around his head like a wet noose. If they stunned him, he would drown before they could pull his body to safety.

"Moody!" begged Karkaroff. His breath burbled and rattled. "After all these years, you won't abandon your ethics. You brought me in alive once. You must do it again."

"Lean back, Alastor," said Scrimgeour quietly. Tonks couldn't remember the last time she'd heard anyone, let alone Scrimgeour, call Mad-Eye by his proper name. "I don't like his fixation on you. You, too, Kingsley. Don't let him go for the diadem. Tonks, conjure a rope and throw it to him. If he tries anything before you're able to get him aboard, don't panic. The rest of us will kill him."

Tonks nodded and conjured the rope. It shot over the dark water to Karkaroff, but as it touched him it burst into flames. She shouted at the sudden pain and only just managed to hold onto her wand as Karkaroff pulled her into the water.

A shield charm bubbled around them. Karkaroff had not been so weak as he had pretended. "There's no escaping for me," Karkaroff sneered. "And I'll only be able to take down one of you. But if only one, I'm glad it's you. It will hurt Moody more to watch you die than to die himself. The old man hasn't loved more than three or four living beings in his life, but I have his pink-haired little girl in my hands."

And he raised his hands to strangle her.

" _Stupefy_ ," she thought as hard as she could, and it was just as well that she needed to cast this spell wordlessly, because she didn't want the last thing Karkaroff heard to be the shake in her voice.

 _Compartmentalize_ , they had told her in training. The middle of a fight is not the time to panic at the sight of a dead body.

The middle of the fight is not the time to contemplate what it means to cast a spell you know will be deadly.

The shield charm evaporated when Karkaroff lost consciousness; a rope appeared in front of her. (She knew that Kingsley must have been the one to conjure it, because neither Scrimgeour nor Mad-Eye had the sense of whimsy to make the rope glow fluorescent pink.)

She grabbed for the rope and for Karkaroff and managed to catch both. Kingsley towed them back to the boat and Mad-Eye scooped her into his arms, not even bothering to pretend that she was just another Auror on the team to him.

Scrimgeour tried to revive Karkaroff, but Tonks knew without looking that it would be of no use.

Karkaroff was dead.

"Good," Mad-Eye whispered in her ear. "You didn't let him distract you. You took care of yourself. You did what you had to do, and you did it well. I'm proud of you."

"He wanted to kill me so you'd have to watch," Tonks said. "It wasn't even about me. I have to stick around long enough for them to want to kill me for me."

"That's the spirit," said Mad-Eye, but there was something hollow in his voice.

"Clearly self-defense," said Scrimgeour as he turned away from Karkaroff's corpse. "You'll be put on leave and investigated, Tonks, but only because we have to follow the procedure whenever there's a death. Since I'm a witness, Robards will do the investigation, but you have nothing to worry about."

"When does the suspension start?" she asked with a wild thought that they were going to throw her out of the boat on the spot.

"As soon as practical, which means after we've returned the diadem to Hogwarts."

She nodded her understanding and stared at Karkaroff's lifeless eyes until Kingsley conjured a shroud and draped it over the corpse.

* * *

It was still dark when they reached Copenhagen. They tucked the boat into a shady corner and Scrimgeour went in search of the Danish Aurors. He returned twenty minutes later accompanied by a wizard and a witch who briefly questioned them before providing them with a Portkey that brought them straight to the grand entrance to the Ministry of Magic in London.

Kingsley gave the diadem to Mad-Eye and accompanied Scrimgeour and the corpse to the Auror office.

Mad-Eye took Tonks by the shoulder. "Back to Hogsmeade," he said, guiding her to the platform reserved for Disapparition.

A blink, and Hogsmeade appeared before them.

The path to Hogwarts was the same as it had been when they'd run down it in pursuit of Karkaroff.

It was also completely different, because for the first time Tonks was seeing it through the eyes of a woman who had killed a man.

**_To be continued._ **

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: The structure of this chapter borrows heavily from the climactic scene in Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After . The hidden passageway, the villain whining about not disliking the four people he wants to kill equally, the exploding ship, the battle to the death in the water. None of it is original. (Hey, I already don't own the characters and situations… why should I own the action sequences?)
> 
> Also, regarding the anonymous question about whether I believe each Horcrux affects a person differently: yes. I think that the original nature of the object, the way the object is being used, and the nature of the person by/against whom the object is being used all matter.


	48. Tonks Interlude F

A coldness settled into Tonks' bones as she and Mad-Eye made their way back to the castle. While June nights in Scotland weren't known for their warmth, neither should it have taken everything in her to keep Mad-Eye from noticing that she was shivering.

He noticed anyway when they reached the castle door and her hand was shaking too hard to open it on the first try.

He said nothing. She wondered whether that was a gesture of respect; it could be that Mad-Eye assumed that if she wanted to talk about what had happened, she would. On the other hand, it might be that Mad-Eye was so disgusted with her that…

No. No, she knew better than that.

_"You didn't let him distract you. You took care of yourself. You did what you had to do, and you did it well. I'm proud of you."_

He'd said he was proud of her. Mad-Eye didn't dole out praise easily, so she could hardly expect him to say it again.

 _Compartmentalize_ , she reminded herself, just as she had when she had felt Karkaroff drown. She had not yet received her formal notice of suspension. She was still on duty, and she would do her duty to the best of her ability.

She matched her stride to Mad-Eye's as they headed toward Dumbledore's office.

Both Dumbledore and Remus stood when the door opened to admit Tonks and Mad-Eye. The relief that was plain on Remus' face made Tonks want all the more desperately to run into his arms. She didn't. She was still on duty. But seeing Remus, and knowing that he had been worried for her, melted some of the chill in her bones.

She remembered how warm she'd felt when he'd pulled her into his lap the night he'd been persuaded to stay at her flat.

_"I like you very much. And I want you very much. Yes, Nymphadora Vulpecula Tonks, I would be honored if you would be my girlfriend."_

Would he still like her and want her once he knew that she was officially a killer? That perhaps her soul had ripped the moment she'd cast a stunning spell at a drowning man? Would he feel honored to be her boyfriend then?

_Compartmentalize._

Mad-Eye handed the diadem to Dumbledore and seated himself. Remus pulled out another chair for Tonks. His hand brushed the back of her neck, banishing the last of the cold from her insides, as she sat down.

How was it that the slightest touch from him, a touch that might as well have been inadvertent (it hadn't been inadvertent), gave her a stronger feeling of connection than a kiss from any other man she'd ever dated?

It was not the time to wonder about that.

Dumbledore was at the fireplace and calling for Professor Snape. An instant later, Snape was climbing through the fire and brushing ashes from his robes.

"They retrieved it, Severus," said Dumbledore, and he presented the diadem to Snape for his inspection.

A sneer curled Snape's lip as he turned the diadem over in his hands. "I've rarely felt such dark magic."

"Nor have I. It is a shame that such an important part of Hogwarts' legacy has been defiled, but it must be destroyed for the protection of all." He nodded at the Sword of Gryffindor which hung on the office wall. "Severus, if you would?"

"With pleasure." Snape plucked the sword from the wall and deposited the diadem on a table. With one strong blow, he shattered the diadem into four pieces. A sickening wave of green-black smoke enveloped them all, and for the blink of an eye Tonks couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't feel.

The smoke dissipated as quickly as it had come. Snape returned the sword to its place on the wall.

"Well done, Severus. Thank you," said Dumbledore. "As everyone knows, the Sword of Gryffindor does not allow just anyone to wield it." Tonks noticed that Dumbledore was looking straight at Remus as he spoke, but she didn't know or care why.

Pointedly ignoring whatever was going on between Dumbledore and Remus, Mad-Eye told Dumbledore that Kingsley and Scrimgeour had taken Karkaroff's body back to the Ministry. "I must explain the situation to the Durmstrang students," said Dumbledore. "Will breakfast be soon enough, or will they hear word from other sources before then?"

Mad-Eye was of the opinion that breakfast would be adequate as long as the students had strong stomachs. Snape thought that Dumbledore ought to meet with the students on their own ship; Remus thought that Dumbledore should speak privately with Viktor Krum before telling the others.

Tonks refrained from suggesting that she morph into Dumbledore and tell the students so that she could subject herself to their grief for the man she had killed. It was the least that she deserved after what she had done. They would feel pain, and she was the cause of it.

Karkaroff had wanted to kill her, and Mad-Eye, and Kingsley, and Scrimgeour. He'd attacked Harry Potter repeatedly; he'd made a hostage of Ginny Weasley, who was thirteen years old and looked about nine. Tonks had killed in self-defense. She'd killed in the line of duty.

She had still taken someone away from the people who loved him.

She stared at the broken pieces of the diadem. Somehow, they reminded her of the necklace hidden in the bottom of her mother's jewelry box. The three names entwined: _Bellatrix-Andromeda-Narcissa._ It didn't matter that there was no place for Bellatrix and Narcissa and their pureblood mania in the life Andromeda had chosen with her husband and daughter. It didn't matter that the sisters were only metaphorically dead to one another rather than literally dead.

Death Eaters loved, and were loved by, their families.

Her thoughts were interrupted when an owl swooped through the open window. It was an arrogant-looking Ministry owl carrying an arrogant-looking roll of parchment.

She didn't need to open the parchment to know what it said:

_Dear Auror Tonks:_

_We have received notice that at approximately ten o'clock on June 24, you took actions which resulted in the death of Igor Karkaroff._

_This serves as your formal notice of suspension pending a full investigation into your use of deadly force. Please do not report to the Auror Office until you are summoned for an interview._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Gawain Robards_

_Deputy Head, Auror Office_

She had worked all of her life to become an Auror, and her career had lasted less than a year.

"Scrimgeour already told you that you'd be cleared," said Mad-Eye, who was reading over her shoulder. "This is a formality. Kingsley and I saw you do everything by the book. So did Scrimgeour."

"I know," she said, even though her mind was screaming that she didn't know.

"Get up," said Mad-Eye.

Tonks stood obediently; obeying Mad-Eye at times like these was second nature.

As soon as she stood, though, she fell as a terrible pain shot from her ankle all the way up her leg and spine. Her leg buckled and she fell faster than Mad-Eye could catch her.

"Oh," she said stupidly from her place on the floor. "I forgot I broke my ankle."

"When?" demanded Mad-Eye.

"I twisted it when we were running toward Hogsmeade. I don't think it actually broke until the Portkey put us down in Durmstrang."

"And probably saved all of our lives when Karkaroff's spell missed you because you were down on the ground," rumbled Mad-Eye. "But that's no excuse for not telling your team that you were injured when we made it to Copenhagen- _at the very latest, Tonks._ The people you're fighting with need to know if you aren't at full capacity."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Which is not to say I'm not impressed with your tenacity. The last thing we need is an Auror who can't fight through pain."

"There's no need for you to be in pain now, however," Dumbledore injected. "As you are currently suspended from your duties with the Auror Office, there is no reason you don't have time to visit Madam Pomfrey. Alastor, if you would escort her on your way out?"

Mad-Eye nodded and heaved Tonks back to her feet. Someone cast _ferula_ at her ankle; she would at least make it to the Hospital Wing under her own power.

* * *

The Hospital Wing was crowded and loud, but Madam Pomfrey smoothly extracted herself from the throng- Sirius hovering over a sleeping Harry in one bed, half the Weasley family clustered around Ginny in another.

Tonks started to climb onto the bed next to Harry's, but Madam Pomfrey shook her head and guided her instead to an isolated bed behind a privacy screen. "You're an adult now, Auror Tonks," said Madam Pomfrey with a formality that made Tonks ache inside. _Auror Tonks._ But for how much longer? And how well-deserved?

As a student, Tonks had never cared about the lack of privacy offered by the Hospital Wing. It was a side effect of knowing that her body could be anything; how it looked at any given time was meaningless. She had never had much in the way of shame.

She felt shame now.

Mad-Eye left even before Madam Pomfrey magically removed Tonks' boot to expose her ankle. He muttered something about making certain Scrimgeour did things properly and checking on Tonks in a day or two.

"Have you morphed since injuring yourself?" asked Madam Pomfrey rather severely.

"Yes," said Tonks. As a student, she would have defended herself with a cheeky grin. As an adult, she had a genuine explanation- Scrimgeour had _ordered_ her to morph in a life-or-death situation- but she didn't bother sharing. She didn't want to think about it.

"Resume your base form. _That includes the hair,_ Auror Tonks."

She genuinely didn't believe that the color of her hair had anything to do with the bones in her ankle. She was not, however, in the mood for an argument. She let her hair soften and lengthen into its natural light brown waves.

"No morphing for two days," added Madam Pomfrey. "You let those bones rest."

"Of course."

"Let me know if the pain gets to be too much."

Tonks was certain that it wouldn't. She took the proffered vial of Skele-Gro and downed it like a shot as Madam Pomfrey pulsed her wand above the offending ankle.

One stab of pain. She wondered what her mother would think. Andromeda had left her family because she was disgusted by their habit of supporting murder. (And their bigotry. And their refusal to let her marry Ted. And their stifling inbred dullness. But definitely their habit of supporting murder, too.)

Two stabs of pain. She wondered what her father would think. Ted was one of the warmest, kindest, friendliest men who had ever walked the planet. The thought of Ted Tonks killing a man was ludicrous.

Three stabs of pain. She wondered what Tulip would think. Tulip, who had been banned from visiting Tonks as a child because Tonks had relatives in Azkaban… and it hadn't even been murder for which Bellatrix had been sentenced to life in prison.

Four stabs of pain. She wondered what Penny would think. Penny, who sometimes considered leaving the magical world entirely because it was so violent.

Five stabs of pain. She wondered what Remus would think. He taught Defense Against the Dark Arts- _really taught it,_ didn't encourage the students to treat it as make-believe. He had fought against Voldemort as a young man. Perhaps he had even killed? But he loathed the part of himself that was a wolf. He hesitated even to touch people, so afraid was he that he might hurt someone.

Six stabs of pain. She wondered what Mad-Eye thought. He'd hastened to leave the Hospital Wing after he'd deposited her here. Karkaroff's pleas echoed in her ears. _"Moody! You always brought your man in alive when you could!"_

"How's the pain?" asked Madam Pomfrey.

" _Good_ ," breathed Tonks. Each pulse of pain distracted her mind from thoughts of the people she'd disappointed. She hated thinking. She preferred action. Or rather, she had preferred action until she'd killed a man.

Madam Pomfrey eyed her strangely. "You are not to leave this bed tonight. Not for anything."

If Madam Pomfrey had said that to Tonks five years ago- or five days ago- Tonks would have had a dozen cheeky responses at the ready. Today, all she could do was nod solemnly.

In any case, any remark she might have made would have been lost in the sudden chorus of voices on the other side of the curtain.

* * *

_"It's all right, Harry."_

_"Don't sit up too fast, Harry!"_

_"Harry, dear, do not get out of that bed!"_

"Do _not_ _set_ a poor example for the students, Auror Tonks," said Madam Pomfrey as she strode out from behind the privacy screen to chase Harry back into his bed.

The Skele-Gro continued its work and Tonks leaned back against her pillows and listened as Madam Pomfrey turned her attentions to Harry. Harry was ignoring her, and Tonks picked out his voice.

"I'm so sorry, Ginny. I never should have let you-"

"You didn't _let_ me do anything!" Ginny interrupted. "I do what I want."

"She really does, mate," said a male voice that Tonks thought belonged to one of the Weasley twins. She hadn't quite learned to tell Fred and George apart. "Look, we're the ones who are sorry."

"We shouldn't have stopped you talking to Ginny," elaborated the other twin. "When you come to the Burrow this summer we'll, we'll- well, we haven't quite decided yet but we'll do something to make it up."

"And we'll have you to stay just as soon as we can," said Molly Weasley firmly. "I asked Dumbledore about you coming straight away, but he prefers that you visit your aunt and uncle first."

"I do need to see Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia first," said Harry with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Tonks remembered how he had left her family's house on Christmas looking ill. Sirius had told Andromeda later that Harry had never been to a proper family Christmas before. (Tonks didn't know whether she was meant to know what Sirius had said, but Andromeda had told her nonetheless.)

"No," said Sirius sharply. "No, you don't. You are not visiting your aunt and uncle this summer. You're coming home with me."

"You may be his godfather, but you do not have legal guardianship," Molly injected. "Dumbledore says-"

"I do not care what Dumbledore says," said Sirius.

"I do," said Harry. "And I'm going to the Dursleys. Last Christmas, you thought it was a good idea, too, Sirius."

"Well, that was last Christmas," said Sirius. "I'm willing to take the risk-"

"I'm not," said Harry. Tonks didn't know Harry well, but she could tell that his mind was made up.

So, too, could Sirius, who sighed audibly before he spoke. "All right, Harry. You know how to pick locks, correct?"

"I learned ages ago," said Harry.

"Good. You'll be able to get to your trunk and your wand if they're locked away from you."

"I have before," Harry confirmed.

"I'm going to rearrange your trunk a bit before you get on the train. Is that all right?" Harry must have made some gesture of assent, because Sirius continued. "I'm going to owl Gringotts and have a few galleons changed to Muggle money. Left side hidden pocket of the trunk is easiest for emergency access."

"Thank you," said Harry.

"I know you don't need me to tell you that that's only for a real emergency, so I won't. I'll put a week's worth of non-perishable food in the bottom of the trunk. It should be enough to supplement what they give you. I'll put water purifying potion in with the money in case rainwater is all you can get."

"He's going to stay with his aunt and uncle, not camping," said Molly.

Sirius ignored her. "When you sneak out of your room," he continued, "the floor tends to be quietest next to heavy furniture because it's settled there. But not too close to the wall if you can avoid it in case the floorboards or the carpet aren't perfectly flush with the wall."

Tonks was impressed with this bit of advice. She had learned it herself in Auror training (for all the good the knowledge did her, as she nearly failed Stealth and Tracking anyway thanks to her clumsiness).

She wondered whether Sirius had learned about where the floors were quietest when he'd fought against You-Know-Who, or whether he had had to learn it growing up in Grimmauld Place. His hatred for Grimmauld Place was palpable, and Tonks was ignorant of the details as to why.

"If you climb on the furniture, it disrupts the pattern of your footsteps and makes it harder to hear where you are in the house. Socks are quieter than bare feet or shoes. I can charm a few pairs for you that will keep you from sliding. Crawl if you have to, and if you get caught you can say that you fell," Sirius was saying

"I'm not crawling," said Harry.

"You'll do what it takes to come back to the magical world with as few new bruises as possible," said Sirius. "Or if you won't, I'll also get you some potions that will help with the bruises and bleeding."

"They've never really beaten me," said Harry, sounding horribly uncomfortable. "Dudley would have, before he was afraid of me, but I was always too fast for him to hit. I mostly only get bruises because my uncle grabs my arm or something."

"Glad to hear it," said Sirius. "Now, if you end up having to steal food from them, you do it a little bit at a time so that they don't notice a change. If you steal something like juice, you can replace what you took with water, but do not steal anything alcoholic. They'll notice right away if you water it down."

"I don't want that stuff anyway," said Harry.

"I'll teach you to drink when I see you again," Sirius promised.

"Sirius, really!" said Molly. "That's quite enough."

"Did your sons once have to pull bars off of Harry's windows to get him out of that house, or did they not?" asked Sirius.

"It was sort of a laugh," said one of the Weasley boys weakly.

"It was pretty bad," said one of the other Weasley boys at the same time.

"Do they give you access to the toilet?" Sirius asked Harry.

Harry muttered something that sounded like _usually_ .

"There are magical ways around that, too, if you insist on going back."

"They're my mother's only living relatives," said Harry. Something about that quieted Sirius.

Tonks shuddered at the thought of going to visit Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy because Narcissa happened to be her mother's sister.

Now that Sirius had been silenced, Molly resumed fussing over Harry. Her voice was muffled, and Tonks expected that she was hugging Harry. "Everything's going to be fine, dear. You don't need to worry about anything. We'll make certain to have treacle tart the first night that you come to stay with us, and there's no Quidditch World Cup this year, but I'll make you boys a picnic so you can fly all day if you'd like…"

"Very good, Ginny," interrupted Madam Pomfrey at last. Tonks was surprised that she had let the discussion go on as long as she had. Either she'd been as dumbfounded as Tonks herself by Sirius' list of precautions for Harry, or she'd been using the conversation as a distraction so as to look Ginny over without an attentive audience. "Ginny, you are well enough to leave, if you would like."

The sound of Ginny's feet hitting the floor echoed around the room. Tonks almost smiled at Ginny's eagerness. That was a girl after her own heart.

"Come back and check in with me sometime tomorrow," added Madam Pomfrey. "And of course, come back right away if you feel anything amiss."

"I will," said Ginny in a tone that clearly indicated that she expected not to.

"You and your family need to leave Harry to rest," said Madam Pomfrey. There was some general grumbling, but it was Ginny's voice Tonks heard.

"Sirius," she said firmly. "You need to take Harry away this summer. My family went to Egypt after You-Know-Who's diary… well, Harry needs to go someplace new."

"I understand. Thank you, Ginny," said Sirius courteously. Tonks got the distinct impression that Sirius was taking Ginny's opinions more seriously than he had taken Molly's.

The other Weasleys loudly called their goodbyes as Madam Pomfrey shooed them from the room, all the while scolding Sirius that if he did not allow Harry to rest, he would be expelled as well.

Tonks heard Madam Pomfrey bustle back into her office.

"You heard her," said Sirius softly. "If you don't try to get some more sleep, I'll have to leave, and I don't have any intention of leaving."

"D'you reckon Karkaroff will come back?" asked Harry. "For his students, or the ship, or to finish what he started?"

Tonks determined that it was time to divest herself of the privacy she hadn't really needed anyway. (She wouldn't have said no to a hug from Molly Weasley if it had been offered.) "Don't worry about Karkaroff," she called out as loudly as she dared. "He's not going to come back."

At any other time, she would have been amused by Sirius' muffled curse and the sound of a chair nearly toppling over. An instant later, her curtain was drawn aside and Sirius appeared.

"What happened to you?" he demanded, glaring at the brace around her ankle as if it had somehow offended him.

"I broke my ankle a little bit," she said.

"How long have you been here?"

"Since before you and Molly Weasley had that… conversation about whether Harry should visit his aunt and uncle."

"Did you walk right past me without my noticing?" he asked, now sounding more nervous than offended.

"Your attention was on Harry. Where it belonged."

"I should have been more aware of what was going on."

"You've spent too much time with Mad-Eye."

"Or not enough," Sirius returned.

Behind Sirius, Harry slipped out of his bed. Quick as a flash- no wonder he was said to be brilliant on the Quidditch pitch- he slipped around the screen and under Sirius' arm. "Hello, Tonks," he said. "What do you mean Karkaroff isn't coming back? Is he in Azkaban?"

Tonks swallowed hard. "No. He's dead."

Relief flickered over Harry's and Sirius' faces.

"Is he dead-dead?" asked Harry. "Or only Voldemort-dead?"

"I only know of one kind of dead," said Tonks. _The kind that came with begging and pleading, icy water and fiery explosions, hands around her throat and an unseeing corpse in a rowboat._

"I think Harry wants to know if you have a body," said Sirius.

"Yes," Tonks confirmed. "We have a body and it's at the Ministry of Magic right now."

"How did he die?"

"Technically, he drowned."

" _Technically_ ?" pushed Harry.

"I stunned him. He was trying to strangle me at the time, mind, but I stunned him while he was in the water and barely keeping his head up."

Sirius' hand flew to her shoulder, brushing back her boring brown hair to inspect her neck. "There are still bruises on your throat," he said.

"Maybe I should have someone take a photo," she mused. "I'll use it as a defense if I'm not cleared."

"You could get in trouble for killing him even though he was trying to kill you?" asked Harry.

Sirius laughed darkly. "Where did you get the idea that the Ministry cares about things like morality and fairness, Harry?"

Tonks didn't like the darkness in Sirius' laugh. She didn't like the flash of anger she'd seen in his eyes when he'd looked at her bruises. She didn't like the fear she'd sensed from him when he'd realized that she'd entered the Hospital Wing without him knowing it. And above all, she ached for whatever it was in his past that had made him think to tell Harry how to purify rainwater and sneak around his uncle's house.

She thought about how Karkaroff had compared her to her Aunt Bellatrix as they'd dueled in the halls of Durmstrang.

"I'll be fine," she said, even though she didn't feel at all that she would be fine. It was more important that Sirius and Harry thought that she would be fine. "They automatically suspend an Auror to do an investigation every time someone dies, but Scrimgeour- he's the head of the Aurors- saw it all happen and told me I had nothing to worry about."

She knew Scrimgeour had meant it. She still wanted to hear him say it again and again.

Just like she knew that none of the people she loved- not her friends, not her family- would really hate her for killing someone in self-defense. She wasn't worried about what they thought of her.

She was worried about what she thought of herself.

A day ago, Igor Karkaroff had been alive. Now he was dead. She had personally brought that about. She had used a power that most human beings never used, and yet she felt helpless.

"What's it like to kill someone?" asked Harry.

Sirius looked sharply at Harry, and then at Tonks, but he didn't say anything.

Tonks didn't usually think about questions like that. She'd been specifically trained not to think about questions like that. The question Aurors usually got was _Have you ever killed anyone?_ The standard answer was _Most Aurors go their whole careers without killing anyone._

Most Aurors _did_ go their whole careers without killing anyone.

What had made her so unique that she'd killed someone after a single year? Why had she been chosen for the Hogwarts detail? Why hadn't they taken Karkaroff down before he'd reached the ship? Why had she been the one in the water with Karkaroff? Why hadn't the others been able to break the shield charm more quickly so as to bring Karkaroff in alive?

"I haven't had much time to decide how it feels," she told Harry. "Why do you ask?"

"I almost killed Cedric Diggory today," said Harry.

Another jolt of pain flashed through her healing ankle, and this one seemed to make her whole body convulse with sickness. Above all, her heart hurt for Harry. She should have realized that Harry wasn't the kind of boy who asked intrusive, morbid questions for no reason.

"He used the diadem to make you do it?" she asked.

Harry nodded.

"That's been destroyed. Don't worry about it. It won't hurt anyone again."

"That's good," said Harry.

"Destroyed how?" Sirius demanded, suddenly stiff and tense beside her.

"Sword of Gryffindor."

Sirius relaxed marginally. "Remus was there?"

"He was." Her eyes burned with unshed tears at the thought of Remus. Her family and her friends would still be her family and her friends when she cleared her suspension and returned to work. Her family and her friends would still be her family and friends even if her name was never cleared. Remus, though… as strong as the pull was to Remus, as often as he seemed to know things about her without needing to be told, they didn't really know one another terribly well. It didn't make sense that she should want him so desperately.

She supposed that love wasn't meant to make sense.

Harry was staring hard in the other direction and had taken half a step back toward his own bed. Apparently crying women were not one of his many specialties.

"Did Remus say something stupid to you?" asked Sirius. "Because if he did, he didn't mean it. He's just stupid sometimes. I'll put him right tomorrow."

"He didn't say anything stupid to me," said Tonks, successfully swallowing her tears. "He didn't really say anything at all. It wasn't the time for him to say anything, not with Moody and Snape and Dumbledore all there, but… I'd just like to see him."

Sirius' grey gaze swept over her. "If you promise to watch Harry every minute that I'm gone, I'll fetch him for you."

"I don't need to be watched," said Harry, who had come closer again now that Tonks had pulled herself together.

"Yes, you do," said Sirius. "Madam Pomfrey told you to stay in bed, and look where you are."

"But you haven't made me get back in bed," Harry retorted. "So it doesn't matter whether you're watching me or not."

"Getting out of bed is one thing. Sneaking off to find Cedric Diggory so you can apologize to him is something else entirely."

"I did try to kill him," said Harry. "I think he's owed an apology."

"Igor Karkaroff tried to kill him," Sirius corrected. "By all accounts, Cedric Diggory is intelligent enough to appreciate the distinction."

"I'm going to apologize," said Harry firmly.

"That's wonderful. You won't be doing it tonight. You can speak to him when you're feeling stronger."

"I feel fine!" Harry objected.

"I nearly had to pick you up and carry you to get you here from Dumbledore's office. You were asleep before Madam Pomfrey finished examining you."

"I'm rested now."

"Are you always this argumentative?"

"Uncle Vernon says I am."

"It feels helpless," Tonks interrupted. Harry and Sirius stopped talking and stared at her. "Killing someone," she qualified needlessly. "You asked how it feels, Harry. It feels powerless and lonely and like you're something less than you were before it happened. It feels like you might have been worthy of the people around you before, but now you're not."

"He was trying to kill you when it happened," said Harry.

"You'd think that would make a difference, right?" said Tonks. "It doesn't."

"All right," said Sirius. "I will go get Remus for you." He smirked thinly. "I seem to recall that his current password is _pink hair_ ."

This revelation sent a pleasant flutter of delight through her chest before she squelched it. It wasn't becoming for killers to have pleasant flutters of delight.

She almost told Sirius not to go. She almost thought that it would be best to have one more night before she knew if Remus no longer wanted her.

"Thank you," she said instead. "I'll watch over Harry."

"Still don't need watching," said Harry.

"Afraid you do," said Tonks as Sirius transformed into the black dog (she did not want to think about the Grim right now) and bounded from the room. "As a proud Hufflepuff, I can't stand idly by while you make plans to break into the Hufflepuff common room."

"I never said I was going to do that."

"It's the middle of the night. Where do you suppose Cedric is?"

Harry deflated slightly. "I wouldn't even know how to get in. I know the entrance is down by the kitchens, but it would be almost impossible to sneak in without the password."

"Especially as Hufflepuffs don't use a password."

"What _do_ they use?" asked Harry keenly.

Tonks tried to smile. "House secret," she said.

Harry accepted that with petulant disappointment. "Why did you want to see Lupin?" She felt herself flush slightly. "And his password is _pink hair_ now?" Harry continued. "That's… usually your hair… you're together?"

"Please don't tell the other students," she said. "It's not against the rules, but I don't think he'd like his students to gossip about him."

"Oh, they do that already," said Harry quickly. "Professor Sprout had to take points off of Lavender and Parvati and Hannah and Susan about a month ago because it was all they could talk about when we were supposed to be collecting bubotuber pus. Hannah and Susan were sure they saw you two looking at each other during their Defense class, but Lavender and Parvati thought that he wasn't your type."

"Well, he is," said Tonks, slightly annoyed by the commentary of two fourteen-year-olds she didn't think she'd ever met.

Harry held up his hands in a sort of surrender. " _I_ think it's brilliant," he said.

"Thank you, Harry," she said, and he smiled a real smile at her. For an instant, the world felt normal again. She almost forgot that she was lying in the Hospital Wing, her ankle too weak to support her weight, suspended from work, talking to a boy who had been used as a weapon against his friend by a man she had tracked and killed.

Then Sirius and Remus appeared in the doorway and she remembered it all again.

**_To be continued._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Some of Sirius' commentary on sneaking around a house was taken from a series of anonymous social media posts, accessed by a Google search for how to survive in a home with abusive parents. (I truly hate that that sort of search yields results.) My other search for this chapter was for stories about people in law enforcement who had to kill in the line of duty. Cheery sort of a fic I'm writing, isn't it?


	49. The Confession

Dumbledore dismissed Remus from his office; Remus felt Snape's sneer on his back.

The familiar feeling of jittery numbness settled over him. He'd felt it often before a full moon, or sometimes after a life-altering tragedy. It never got any more pleasant.

His first thought was to go to the Hospital Wing to check on Sirius, Harry, and Dora. He was halfway there before he reminded himself that after the day he'd had (after the _year_ he'd had), Harry wouldn't want his professor imposing on his time with his godfather. Sirius was furious that Harry had been tortured with a Horcrux and was no doubt very, very much aware that it never would have happened if Remus hadn't decided to change history.

And Dora… Dora had almost certainly left already. Madam Pomfrey would have fixed her ankle and Dora would have gone home to, if not Ted and Andromeda, Penny or Tulip. Dora didn't live in the world she had lived in when Remus had met her for the first time. The war and the Order had kept her isolated from her family and her friends. Now she was free to live the life she should have lived all along… except for the part where Karkaroff had almost killed her.

Dora didn't know yet that Remus was responsible for her harrowing ordeal. She would not have needed to track down the diadem if Remus had handled it appropriately. None of this would have happened if Remus had died appropriately.

She didn't know yet. Soon she would need to know. But _soon_ was not tonight.

Remus returned to his office and attempted to write a letter to the next Defense professor delineating what each class had learned and touching on the general dynamics of each group of students.

He didn't get far.

He resumed trying.

There was a nonzero chance that Dumbledore would sack him within the next few days, and he needed to be prepared so that the students wouldn't suffer during the transition to their new professor.

He couldn't focus.

He resumed trying.

* * *

This lasted until Sirius opened the door without knocking and grabbed Remus by the back of his robes.

"Come on," said Sirius, slightly breathless. There was no further explanation as they ran through the corridors.

"Harry?" asked Remus.

"It's not that I don't trust little Nymphadora to supervise him, but she does have a broken ankle."

"He needs supervision?"

"Not according to him, but I'll take his opinion into account when he makes it through a school year without nearly getting himself killed." Then, as quickly as he had started running, Sirius stopped. "Tonks wanted me to fetch you. Do us all a favor and don't fuck things up by telling her how guilty you feel about the whole thing. Just tell her you love her and you want her to marry you and have your babies or whatever, even if she had to kill Karkaroff."

Before Remus could respond, they were running again. They didn't stop until they reached the Hospital Wing.

* * *

Both Harry and Dora looked a bit too pale, but both were sitting up on their beds. They had clearly been discussing something they found amusing.

He had expected much, much worse.

Remus was at a loss for words, as all he really wanted to say to either of them was _I'm sorry_ , and Sirius had helpfully made it clear that that would be a bad idea.

"Have you stayed out of trouble while I was gone?" asked Sirius.

"No," said Harry seriously. "I just couldn't follow the rules without you being here to set me an example. Tonks tried to stop me, but she's only an Auror, so what could she really do about it?"

"Your facetiousness is a testament to your maturity, which astounds us all," said Sirius.

The fact that Harry was feeling well enough to tease Sirius did, in fact, astound Remus. He started to reach out to touch Harry on the shoulder to assure himself that Harry was whole and healthy. He stopped himself; he was a teacher, after all, and Harry did not have the relationship with him that he had with Sirius.

Hadn't this been one of the things he'd regretted at his death?

Sirius was right. Remus was very prone to fucking up this sort of thing.

He squeezed Harry on the shoulder, and Harry turned to look up at him with a small smile. "Tonks told me about the two of you," he said. "Parvati and Lavender owe Hannah and Susan a case of butterbeer."

"I told you not to tell him that!" objected Dora. Remus made his way past Harry's bed and sat down next to Dora.

"You told me not to tell anyone about the two of you, and I won't. You didn't tell me that I couldn't tell Professor Lupin that if I did tell everyone, Lavender and Paravati would know they lost a bet."

Sirius laughed so suddenly that he clapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself drawing Madam Pomfrey's attention. "The students have been betting on whether Professor Lupin and Auror Tonks are engaging in extracurricular activities?" he asked when he'd composed himself.

Harry nodded.

"At least something entertaining happened today," said Sirius. "On that note, it's time for you to go back to sleep."

Harry looked like he might object, but Sirius drew the privacy curtain around Dora's bed and cast a flurry of spells to keep Remus and Dora's conversation private, too.

* * *

Remus echoed Sirius' motion with his own wand. He didn't mind, really, that he had been the subject of his students' gossip, but he did need to talk to Dora without an audience now. She was watching him with wide eyes. She hadn't tried to fly into his arms; he hadn't had to remind her to be careful of her healing ankle. She hadn't shouted a thousand things as soon as he'd entered the room; she'd only spoken to tell Harry to respect their privacy. She hadn't even leaned into him when he'd sat down beside her.

This wasn't a Dora he'd ever known before. This was a Dora who had been created by the circumstances into which he had thrust her.

But Sirius had told him not to talk about that.

"How are you, Dora?" he asked hoarsely. "I mean, physically."

"The Skele-Gro is mostly done working. I can't feel it much anymore."

"Is there anything you need? Food, water, pain potions?"

She shook her head, still quiet. Her brown hair floated softly against her shoulders.

He had only seen her hair that color once before. She'd been so stricken by grief that she'd been unable to morph. "Your hair-"

"Madam Pomfrey doesn't like me to morph at all when she's fixing a broken bone. That includes hair color."

"Ah." That was good news. "Then that takes care of the physical side. How are you… otherwise?"

She shrugged. "I wanted to be an Auror for most of my life. I knew this was part of it. Nights like this are something I planned for and something I'll learn to handle. It's still a shock right now, is all." She fixed him with a hard look. "How much of a shock is it to you? That I killed Igor Karkaroff?"

"I wish you hadn't been put in a position in which you had to kill someone," he said quietly. He supposed that he was still allowed to wish that even if he wasn't allowed to apologize for the part he had played in putting her there. "But I can't say it's shocking. I fought in a war against men and women like Karkaroff. I fought in a war against Karkaroff himself."

She nodded slowly. "We always say that most Aurors never kill anyone. I suppose it's different when there's a war on."

"It is. It's very different." He sensed her unasked question and decided to answer it. "I don't know for certain whether I've ever killed anyone."

"You don't know?"

"In a battle sometimes you can't tell. There are spells flying in every direction. Someone falls down dead and you don't know who cast the spell that hit him, or whether it was a combination of spells. More often, you're confronted with the exact set of circumstances you faced today."

"You fought Death Eaters in the middle of the ocean? Or the North Sea, anyway?"

"No, but there was one incident in particular…" His mind churned unpleasantly. Did he even remember the incident properly? Dumbledore insisted that Snape had been saving him, not trying to kill him… "There were fourteen of us on brooms, and I don't know how many Death Eaters. Stunning someone meant he would most likely fall to his death. Failing to stun him meant he might send one of your comrades to his death."

"Not knowing doesn't bother you?" she asked.

"Not knowing would bother me greatly if it were- it's important to me that I never, ever let the wolf part of me hurt someone. I have taken terrible risks that I shouldn't have taken, but it would drive me to madness if I wasn't certain that I somehow escaped doing real harm."

"That makes sense." She fidgeted quietly with her brown hair, then looked up at him sharply. "You can live with fighting in a war. You can live with killing. Does that mean you've considered what it means to be romantically involved with an Auror?"

"Yes," he said. "I can safely say I've considered that."

"Not everyone can," she continued. "It's one of the reasons I haven't dated very much. Most women who are Aurors don't get married at all, or if they do they get married to other Aurors."

Remus smiled sadly as he thought of Frank and Alice Longbottom.

"I could die doing my job, and I've made that choice. I guess because you fought against You-Know-Who, you understand that. You know what it's like to lose people, and you know what you're risking if you choose me. I could put someone in Azkaban, and that person could be released and come after me for revenge. Or he could come after my family. It means I could never marry a Muggle, because he wouldn't be able to defend himself. It means I can always get called away- on Christmas, on my birthday, on the day after a full moon when I'd rather stay home and fuss over you."

"I don't expect you to fuss over me on the day after a full moon whether you're working or not."

"Can you handle not knowing what to expect?"

He fought back a smile. Not knowing what to expect was one of his favorite things about a life with Dora in it. That wasn't what she meant, though, and he knew it. They'd had this conversation, or a variant of it, the day he'd died.

It had been a rainy spring afternoon and Dora had been holding Teddy as she sat in the rocking chair in the nursery. He'd stood behind them and wrapped his arms around them both while they'd made plans that would never come true about grandparents and visiting friends and gnomes in the garden.

_"One of us will need to be with Teddy most of the time, and it won't be the most celebrated Auror in Britain. You won't have any shortage of magical messes to clean up and junior Aurors to train."_

_"Will you mind? Being my arm candy house husband?"_

_Remus laughed. "Not at all." Once, it would have bothered him. He wouldn't have been able to believe or tolerate Dora's insistence that she found him attractive. He would have burned with anger and shame at the thought of letting his beautiful young wife support their family financially. But Teddy's birth had endowed him with something solid, something stable, something peaceful. He had never believed that having a family of his own was a realistic possibility, and when Teddy had been born happy and healthy and without a trace of the werewolf curse, something inside of Remus has shifted._

"Yes," he said. "I understand that when one person becomes an Auror, the whole family is at the mercy of the Auror Office. I would happily devote my life to supporting your career if it came to that."

"You have a career, too," she said. "One you love and one you're brilliant at."

"And one I will lose the moment my lyncanthropy becomes public knowledge. I don't want that to happen, but it must happen eventually. I'm on borrowed time at Hogwarts. I've told you before that I've rarely been able to find paid work because of what I am."

She brushed him off impatiently. "The length of our conversations about whether I know what it means to get involved with you would put one of Professor Binns' lectures to shame. This is the first time we've talked about whether you know what it means to be involved with me."

"I do," he said, and he knew he should elaborate but he didn't want to.

_I do._

A vow.

A vow he'd taken in the future-past and would take again tonight if Dora would stand for it.

(She couldn't stand for it. She couldn't stand for anything. Her ankle was broken.)

(That joke was stupid. It was worthy of Sirius. He was glad it had stayed inside his own head.)

"Dora, if we need to talk about this again, we can have a conversation the length of which will, and I quote, put one of Professor Binns' lectures to shame. But for now, you need to sleep."

"I can't. I couldn't. Every time I close my eyes I see the flames on the water and Kingsley conjuring a shroud. No. I can't."

He could hardly pretend he'd never spent a sleepless night replaying the horrors of the day. "As you wish," he said, and he kicked off his shoes. "I can't offer you the opportunity to throw them this time, I'm afraid."

"What are you doing?"

He stretched himself out along the edge of the bed and tugged her into his arms, mindful of her still-healing ankle.

"Madam Pomfrey is going to catch us and ban us from ever coming in here again," she murmured, but she had already relaxed against him.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "She will not. I spent more time in the Hospital Wing than any other student in the history of Hogwarts, and very little of it was through my own fault. Madam Pomfrey likes me."

"She'll still throw you out."

"Yes, she will. But I care for you enough to face down Madam Pomfrey."

"You must really like me."

"I love you."

He hadn't meant to say it. Before he was able to rush on, though, and assure Dora that she didn't need to say it back, she had covered his lips with hers. He sank into the kiss.

"I love you, too."

Dora did stay awake for the rest of the night. Her eyes never blinked shut, but she rested quietly against him, her breathing deep and calm.

Against the music of her breath, Remus wondered if some kind of fate had decreed that in any version of the universe, Dora would always declare her love for him here: here in this room where children learned that they had been permanently disfigured, where parents learned that their children had died, where he had spent many pain-filled hours as a boy anguishing over what would become of him when his roommates realized what he was.

Dora was not the woman he had left behind with their infant son when he'd gone to lay down his life in what he'd hoped would be Harry's final battle against Voldemort. Dora hadn't been thrust into a war. Dora hadn't lost her father or Mad-Eye. Dora had spent a year helping him teach at Hogwarts and been forced to kill Igor Karkaroff to save her own life.

But in every reality, she seemed determined to tell him, stubbornly and impulsively and whole-heartedly, that she loved him.

* * *

When the first light of dawn peeked through the windows of the Hospital Wing, Remus removed the spells he and Sirius had placed on the curtains around Dora's bed. Neither he nor Dora felt any inclination to move until they heard the telltale sound of Madam Pomfrey's stride coming toward them. Remus sat up quickly and rearranged Dora before she could hurt herself trying to move on her own. Dora giggled.

She giggled.

Things were looking considerably more hopeful if Dora was giggling.

Madam Pomfrey swept the curtain aside and glared affectionately at Remus. Even Madam Pomfrey's most affectionate glare was rather commanding, however, and so Remus did his best to look innocent.

"You're as bad as Sirius Black," she told him. "No wonder the two of you have always been as thick as thieves."

Remus had been told many times in his life that he was just as bad as Sirius. Sometimes it was an insult. Sometimes it was a compliment. He decided to take it as a compliment this time (not that he was daft enoughto thank Madam Pomfrey). He excused himself and let Madam Pomfrey make certain that Dora's ankle had mended properly in private.

Harry was just blinking awake; so too was Sirius, who had slept as a dog. Remus wondered whether Sirius had needed the escape his Animagus form provided his troubled mind or whether he had become a dog simply because it was convenient. Sirius had rarely transformed during the past year, seemingly determined to prove that he was a man and not an animal. (Remus knew the feeling.)

There was a crash on the other side of the privacy screen followed by Dora's profuse apologies. It had been a normal episode of clumsiness, then; Dora was unhurt. Both Harry and Sirius bolted completely awake, Sirius taking his human form as he did so.

"Just Tonks being Tonks," said Sirius, his voice rough with sleep.

"I heard that," said Dora from behind the curtain.

"You were meant to," said Sirius.

Dora emerged. "I need to go home," she said to Remus. "Owl me when you get a chance?"

"I will," he promised.

She kissed him goodbye, chastely, on the cheek, as Madam Pomfrey called after her that she was not to morph for another 36 hours.

"Now, both of you step back so that I can examine Harry," said Madam Pomfrey.

Sirius and Remus stepped back, but only as far as the corner of the room so that Harry was still well within their line of sight. Sirius cast an anti-eavesdropping charm around them.

"I want to tell Harry about your ill-gotten knowledge today," said Sirius without preamble. He wasn't even looking at Remus; he had eyes only for Harry.

"It wasn't ill-gotten," said Remus.

"I'm not going to argue that point, Moony. But I don't want Harry to know less than Dumbledore about this, and I especially don't want him to know less than Snape. I don't care what Snape swore to Dumbledore on the dirt he and Lily played in as children. He's still the man who repeated that prophecy to Voldemort. He's the reason James and Lily are dead, more than I am, more than Wormtail is."

"I don't disagree." Remus, too, looked only at Harry. Madam Pomfrey was asking questions; Harry was answering with real energy. Harry looked ready for another nasty revelation in what had been a year full of nasty revelations.

It wasn't fair that Harry always had to be ready for nasty revelations.

"Shall we tell him together?" asked Sirius.

"I think so." If Harry wanted to tell Remus what a disgraceful mistake he had made when he had changed the course of history, at least he wouldn't have to walk far to do it.

"I'll give him a choice," Sirius decided. "We'll take him up to your office, and if he says he doesn't want to know today, I'll respect that."

"He isn't going to ask you not to tell him."

"I know."

It wasn't unlike Sirius to rig the game.

It wasn't unlike Remus, either.

* * *

An hour later, Madam Pomfrey had pronounced Harry in perfect health and Harry, Remus, and Sirius were sequestered in Remus' office. A covered breakfast tray appeared as if this were just another morning after the full moon.

"I want to go to the Great Hall for breakfast," said Harry.

"No," said Sirius, and Remus was surprised at his vehemence. He didn't think he'd ever heard Sirius deny Harry anything so abruptly in this reality or the other one.

"You haven't been two inches away from me since Snape broke the memory charm," Harry complained. "I need a shower. Are you going to come in and stare at me?"

"Don't be ridiculous," said Sirius. "You don't need a shower. Wizards had perfectly good washing charms for centuries before they stole the idea of indoor plumbing from Muggles." The look on Harry's face was one of pure exasperation. Sirius was unaffected. "All right, you can take a shower all by yourself as long as I'm allowed to go in and check for Horcruxes first."

Harry's entire demeanor changed. "That crown, the diadem- that was another Horcrux? Like the diary from my second year?"

"Yes."

"Has it been destroyed?"

"Yes."

"That's good. Isn't it?"

"It's good," Sirius confirmed. "You know about the Horcruxes, and you know about the prophecy. There's one more thing about you and Voldemort that you should know. But I don't have to tell you now if you'd really rather go to the Great Hall for breakfast."

Harry grabbed a goblet of pumpkin juice and leaned back in his chair with a mock-thoughtful attitude. Remus wasn't sure whether he looked more like James or more like Sirius in that moment. "Let me think," said Harry, as he swirled the juice in the goblet. "I accidentally let a Death Eater into Professor Lupin's office, and he stole a Horcrux and tried to use it to make me kill Cedric, which I almost did. I let Ginny come with me to figure out what was going on and she ended up under the Imperius Curse. Cedric had to forfeit his chance to win the Triwizard Cup for me, so the whole school probably hates me again. There are more Horcruxes and Death Eaters out there and we don't know exactly where. I'm magically bound to my horrible relatives because my mum died saving my life because a prophecy said I was going to defeat the most powerful wizard who ever lived when I don't even know how I'm going to do on my OWLs next year. So there's really no reason I should know anything else."

"All right," said Sirius. "Go have breakfast in the Great Hall."

Harry sat up straight in his chair and slammed the goblet of pumpkin juice down on the desk. "What else do I need to know about Voldemort and me?"

"You should know that you've defeated Voldemort and all of his Horcruxes once before."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Everyone knows that."

"I don't mean when your parents died saving you. I mean when you were seventeen."

"I'm fourteen, Sirius. Fourteen comes before seventeen."

Sirius, flummoxed by this inescapable fact, looked at Remus for help. "You try. You're the professor. Explain."

Remus wasn't certain he wanted to explain. "First of all, Harry, you should know that when I told Sirius about this, he was absolutely furious. I think that you might be furious as well, and you have a right to be, so I apologize to you in advance. I never wanted to make your life more difficult or force you to fight battles that you already fought."

"Yeah," said Harry. "I know that."

"I know that you defeated Voldemort at the age of seventeen because I lived through it. Or rather, I didn't. I died in the battle a few hours before you rid the world of Voldemort for good."

Harry sucked in his breath. He wasn't going to give a casually cheeky answer now. "If you died three years from now, how are you here?"

"I don't know."

"Was it like _Doctor Who_ ?"

"What?" injected Sirius.

"Never mind," said Harry and Remus in unison.

"Yes, it was… more like that than anything I've ever heard of with a time-turner. I died and I awoke on the Hogwarts Express with you last year. That was how I knew that Sirius was innocent and that Peter Pettigrew was posing as Ron's rat. I'd lived it before."

"Why didn't you take Scabbers away from Ron right away?"

"I tried, but Peter resisted. I was concerned that if I changed too much too soon, I would lose the advantage that I had." _Teddy. I was afraid that Teddy wouldn't exist._ But that wasn't something to share with Harry. "I was able to correct the situation with Sirius. In my memories, Peter escaped and Sirius' name was never cleared." Harry glanced at Sirius with real horror, all previous annoyance long forgotten. "In my memories, Barty Crouch, Junior, used polyjuice potion to impersonate Mad-Eye Moody and put your name in the Goblet of Fire so that you would be forced to compete in the Triwizard Tournament."

"Instead of Cedric?"

"Alongside Cedric. The two of you finished the maze at the same time and took the Cup together. The Cup was a Portkey, and Voldemort murdered Cedric in front of you before using your blood to resurrect himself and begin a new reign of terror."

"Where is Voldemort now?"

Sirius and Remus exchanged a glance. "Albania, as far as we know," Remus said. "He doesn't have Peter or Barty Junior to help him with his resurrection just yet. I was hoping to delay that until we'd handled the matter of the Horcruxes."

Harry nodded. "That sounds reasonable. What else?"

"That's not enough?"

"We haven't gotten to the part that made Sirius furious yet, have we? I doubt that he wanted Cedric to die or Voldemort to come back before we were ready." He craned his neck to look at Sirius. "Were you angry that Professor Lupin took so long to expose Wormtail? So you had to hide out all winter last year?"

"No," said Sirius roughly. "I was angry because I'm not as wise and generous as you are. I was angry because I didn't want to see you struggle with an unfair burden when you'd already succeeded once."

"But I could succeed better this time," said Harry enthusiastically. "Unless there are things we can't change, or I guess the butterfly effect?"

"I'm surprised that you've thought so much about the implications of time travel, Harry," said Remus.

"I haven't really. But Hermione had a time-tuner last year and she spent hours talking about all the things that could go wrong. And Dudley _did_ used to watch _Doctor Who_ before he decided that there weren't enough fights and explosions."

"You're taking this very calmly."

"It's a lot less weird than dementors. Or floo powder. Or being famous for something that happened when I was a baby. Or my long-lost godfather having a flying motorcycle."

"I suppose that's fair," said Remus. The explosion of hurt and anger for which he had been bracing himself for two years was apparently never going to come.

Harry Potter really was a most unusual boy.

_**To be continued.** _


	50. Harry and the Apology

Sirius' hand was tight on Harry's shoulder as they left Lupin's office. Harry almost wished that Sirius would let go before remembering that he had spent most of his life secretly hoping for someone like this: for someone like a parent.

"I want you to go up to Gryffindor Tower and bring down your trunk," Sirius instructed. "Take out anything you need for the next few days, and leave the rest to me. I'll get it back to you before you have to catch the Hogwarts Express."

The urge to feign shock that Sirius was going to let him go up to the tower by himself dissipated as Sirius' words sunk in. Harry remembered the way Sirius had spoken in the Hospital Wing. Non-perishable food… potions to stop bleeding… socks to help him sneak silently around the Dursleys' house… Muggle money….

It was strange to think that someone was really, truly bothered by the way the Dursleys treated Harry- bothered enough to take action.

It was stranger still to think that Sirius knew exactly how to handle the situation. Harry didn't think anyone else had ever understood quite what his life was like when he visited his aunt and uncle, not even after the Weasleys had had to pull bars off of his bedroom window to free him.

"Five minutes," he told Sirius instead of explaining any of this, and he sprinted through the Gryffindor common room and up the stairs to the fourth year boys' dormitory.

It was still early. Classes and exams were over, and so most of the students were having a lie-in. Harry threw his belongings haphazardly into the trunk as quietly as he could. Miraculously, he managed not to wake his roommates as he closed the trunk and levitated it down the stairs.

He did knock over pair of first years as he maneuvered the trunk through the portrait hole, but they seemed to accept his apology.

If only apologizing to Cedric could be so easy.

"Good levitation charm," said Sirius as Harry approached. "Your charmwork has improved this year."

"Thanks." Harry didn't know what else to say.

"You can change your mind, you know," Sirius offered into the silence. "You don't have to stay with your aunt and uncle at all. I can formally assert guardianship- it's what your parents wanted, and as I've been free for a year without incident I expect there won't be any problem-"

"You know what the problem would be," said Harry. "I'm not going to throw away my mum's sacrifice just because I don't get on with my relatives."

"All right." Harry could tell that Sirius didn't agree with his decision. "Try to relax today. I'll get the trunk back to you as soon as I can."

Harry nodded. As he watched Sirius leave, he thought with terrible, terrifying conviction that they would never see one another again.

 _Don't be ridiculous,_ he scolded himself. He retreated to the boys' dormitory, thinking vaguely of having the shower he'd needed since before Karkaroff had slammed the diadem onto his head.

Suddenly his robes- he'd put them on two days ago, and slept two nights in them- felt painfully constricting. He couldn't rip them off quickly enough, but he was equally desperate to stumble out of his trainers and socks. He nearly tore the band of his watch in two trying to strip it from his wrist as he turned the water on and stepped under it.

_Karkaroff forcing him into the maze. Hearing Cedric's footsteps and knowing he could do nothing to stop him coming. Raising his wand. The killing curse on his lips. Krum disarming him from behind. The boneless relief when Krum had managed to remove the diadem. Cedric and Krum agreeing to forfeit the competition to find out what had happened to Harry. Karkaroff's wand at Ginny's throat. Snape filtering through Harry's memories, lingering on the memory of Lily singing to him. The Hospital Wing. The Weasleys. Sirius telling him how to survive in a house with relatives who hated him. Tonks telling him that she had killed Karkaroff. Lupin telling him that he had seen a future in which Harry had defeated Voldemort._

All of it washed away with the hot water as Harry took the longest shower of his life.

Oliver Wood had been notorious for taking long showers after tough Quidditch losses. Fred and George had always joked that he was trying to drown himself.

Harry wasn't trying to drown himself, but he did wish that he could drown the last two days. Or the last year.

But not all of the last year. Not the days he'd spent having snowball fights and visiting the Quidditch Museum with Sirius. Not the quiet afternoons working on Sirius' motorcycle and then eating treacle tart in Lupin's cottage in Yorkshire. Not visiting the Burrow or seeing the World Cup in person. Not sparring with Cedric in the prefects' bathroom. Not competing with Ron to see who could fabricate the most tragic future for their divination homework, laughing until their sides hurt as they did. Not Hermione taking his hand as Dumbledore sent them into an enchanted sleep. Not Hagrid bellowing hello from halfway across the castle grounds.

There had been good days in the midst of the terrible ones.

At long last, when his skin was scrubbed as clean as it had ever been, he dried himself off roughly and collected the clothing he had discarded on the floor. A chorus of shouts greeted him when he re-entered his room.

"Harry!"

Ron and the others had deemed it late enough to drag themselves out of bed even though there would be no classes or exams that day.

"We thought you'd gone," said Neville, pointing at the place where Harry's trunk usually sat.

"My godfather wanted to get it fixed," said Harry, hoping that that would be a sufficient explanation. "I was just taking a shower."

"For an hour?" asked Dean with a suggestive look at Seamus.

"He's either really good at it or really bad," said Seamus.

Harry couldn't believe how normal it all was.

"Doesn't everyone hate me?" he asked Ron in a low voice when they'd all gotten dressed and trooped downstairs. "For ruining Cedric's chances?"

"Not in Gryffindor, anyway," said Ron. "But I think I'd put off talking to any Hufflepuffs until next year if I were you."

Harry waved goodbye to his roommates as they climbed through the portrait hole on their way to breakfast; he himself detoured to the chairs in front of the common room's fireplace.

"You aren't coming?" asked Ron.

"I already ate."

"I'll stay with you, then. I'm not hungry, and there's the feast in a few hours anyway."

In the four years that Harry had known Ron, he had never known Ron not be hungry. He knew that Ron was lying so that Harry wouldn't be alone, and he thought again how lucky he was to have friends in his life.

He didn't even get a chance to tell Ron that he was perfectly fine, and that Ron should go down to the Great Hall with the others, before Hermione was pulling him into a tight hug.

"Where did you even come from?" he asked. "You're not the one with an invisibility cloak."

"Not all of us insist on sleeping all morning just because we can," said Hermione. "I've been at the library."

"Doing what at the library?" exploded Ron. "Classes are over. Exams are over. _You have no reason to be at the library!_ "

It was very, very good to be back with Ron and Hermione where he belonged.

It would be horrible to leave them to stay with the Dursleys.

He let Ron's and Hermione's words drift over him until Ron swatted his arm to make certain he was paying attention. "You should have seen it, mate. She was staring at _him_ the way blokes usually stare at _her_ ."

"And you know it wasn't subtle if Ron noticed it," added Hermione.

"Tonks and Lupin?" asked Harry dumbly, hoping it wouldn't be too obvious that he hadn't been paying attention.

"Fleur and Ron's brother Bill," Hermione corrected.

"You were asleep when it happened," said Ron. "Bill came with Mum to check on Ginny- he had some time off and was visiting the Burrow- and they brought the champions in so Madam Pomfrey could make sure they didn't get burned up too badly in the maze. Fleur couldn't take her eyes off of Bill. Mum's always telling Bill to cut his hair and get rid of the earring, but, let me tell you, _Fleur_ didn't seem to mind."

"I don't know why everyone cares so much what she thinks anyway," said Hermione. "She only won the Tirwizard Tournament because Cedric and Krum forfeited."

"She wouldn't have done it if she'd known," Ron defended. "She said so herself."

"Many times. And loudly," said Hermione.

Around them, the common room gradually filled with students who were awaiting the mid-day feast and ceremony. It seemed that the prize had not been properly awarded to Fleur the day before, and so she would be formally acknowledged as champion after an impromptu feast in the Great Hall.

* * *

The feast was like all other Hogwarts feasts: delicious. Harry sat between Ron and Hermione, with the twins directly across from them, and it was easy to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened the day before.

When the roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops, lamb chops, sausages, bacon, steak, joints, steak and kidney pie, boiled potatoes, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, peppermint humbugs, blocks of ice cream, apple pies, spotted dick, chocolate gateau, treacle tart, pumpkin tart, chocolate éclairs, jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, and rice pudding had all been eaten, the Minister of Magic himself stood in front of the head table and made what Harry thought was a very boring speech. He ignored most of it and tried to watch Cedric out of the corner of his eye, but he had deliberately chosen a seat facing away from the Hufflepuff table, so this was very difficult to do.

"… So now, if Miss Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons Academy would please step forward to accept her prize!"

Everyone turned to look at the Ravenclaw table, at which the Beauxbatons contingent always sat. Fleur was there, as usual, tucked in between two other Beauxbatons girls. She made no move to stand up.

"Mademoiselle Delacour!" called Madame Maxime in a severe tone of voice. Harry and Ron glanced sideways at each other, silently agreeing that they would not want to hear the head of _their_ school shout _their_ names in that particular manner.

Fleur was apparently more concerned about Madame Maxime's opinion than Cornelius Fudge's, too, because she rose stiffly from her seat and approached the high table.

"I cannot accept zis prize," she said, her head held high and her silvery blonde hair tumbling in waves down her back. "I did not earn it. I do not deserve it."

"We discussed this, Fleur," said Madame Maxime. "We discussed this after the second task."

"I do not care," said Fleur, and her usual haughtiness had an edge to it that Harry couldn't quite define. "I did not earn it. Ze uzzer champions left ze maze to 'elp a student. If I had known, I would 'ave left as well. I forfeit."

"Most irregular," worried Cornelius Fudge.

"Never heard of such a thing," said Ludo Bagman.

"Nor have I," added Percy, who had spent the whole year serving in Barty Crouch's place. (Harry was unsurprised at Percy's bewilderment; he certainly couldn't imagine Percy turning down any sort of honor.)

"You cannot forfeit," repeated Madame Maxime. "The magical contract affects the school. Would you like Gabrielle to have the same opportunities you have had?"

Fleur paused.

Viktor Krum slouched from his place at the Slytherin table to Fleur's side. "Accept it," he said. "If there vere another task, I vould forfeit. My headmaster could not be concerned about me doing so because my headmaster is no longer here. Durmstrang did not deserve to win."

Cedric, too, was on his feet. Through a terrible haze of shame, Harry watched Cedric stride to the head table. "You're not to blame for what Karkaroff did," said Cedric. "None of the Durmstrang students are. Karkaroff was not Durmstrang."

"Indeed, he vos not," Krum agreed. He looked Cedric and Fleur over appraisingly. "Vould- vould you consider a rematch?"

"Rerun the maze?" asked Cedric keenly.

"May we, please?" Fleur asked the judges.

"I'm afraid the obstacles in the maze have been removed for safekeeping elsewhere," said Dumbledore.

"And what's the fun of the maze if you already know about the obstacles, anyway?" asked Bagman.

"I vos not aware it vos supposed to be fun," said Krum darkly. Both Cedric and Fleur laughed.

"You are the champion whether you like it or not, Miss Delacour," said Fudge.

"You can call me ze champion if you must," Fleur conceded. "I cannot stop you. But you, in turn, cannot force me to accept zat prize. If I want to look at British galleons, I will get a job at Gringotts." She turned the whole of her attention to Percy, who simultaneously blanched and flushed. Beside Harry, Ron choked on his pumpkin juice. "Your bruzzer, ze one with ze earring, he works for Gringotts, yes?"

"Yes," agreed Percy.

" _I told you_ ," Ron hissed in Harry's ear. "Fleur was staring at Bill the whole time she was in the Hospital Wing."

"Beauxbatons is the school of Nicholas Flamel. We 'ave gold far superior to zis."

"Nonetheless," said Madame Maxime severely, "the money is yours."

Fleur turned so quickly to look at Cedric and Krum that her silver-blonde hair seemed to take on a life of its own. "Do your schools 'ave funds to 'elp buy books for students whose families struggle?"

"Yes," said Krum and Cedric. Harry was surprised. He had never heard of such thing. He wondered why the Weasleys hadn't made use of that fund when their Gringotts vault had been empty and they had needed to buy five sets of Gilderoy Lockhart's books.

"So does Beauxbatons," said Fleur. "I will divide ze money three ways, and one part will go to each school under all of our names."

Fudge and Bagman and Percy all looked poised to argue further, but Dumbledore spoke before they could.

"I see that the Goblet of Fire chose well last autumn," Dumbledore said. "All three of you have demonstrated a love of sportsmanship and fair play that does credit to each of your schools. Knowledge and skill and competitive fire all have their places in the world. But our three champions have shown us something far more important. They have set us all an example of compassion, teamwork, and mutual respect. Perhaps most importantly of all, they have demonstrated a willingness to befriend people different from themselves and share in their joys and sorrows. The Triwizard Tournament, by this measure, has been a great success, and I hope that it will not be another two centuries before the next tournament is hosted by Beauxbatons or Durmstrang."

The Great Hall shook with cheers, just as it had when Dumbledore had first announced the Triwizard Tournament in September. Harry clapped along with everyone else, and then filed outside with the other Hogwarts students to wave goodbye as the Durmstrang ship set sail and the Beauxbatons carriage took flight.

Krum, of course, whispered a private goodbye to Hermione. Ron didn't make his usual complaints about this, however, because Fleur whispered in his ear that she might be seeing him very soon.

Harry almost took advantage of the chaos to seek out Cedric and blurt out his apology, but with both Ron and Hermione flushing and stammering he decided that he was needed right where he was, lest one of them walk dizzily straight into the Whomping Willow.

* * *

Or perhaps Harry was just making excuses not to see Cedric.

"Write him a letter," Ron suggested. "You can borrow Cannon, since everyone knows Hedwig is yours."

That seemed to Harry too much like avoiding the issue, and besides, Cedric probably opened his mail in front of his friends (Harry certainly read Ron's mail over his shoulder on a regular basis).

"Just walk up to him like a normal person," said Hermione. "You've always said he's very nice."

"That's mental," injected Ron before Harry could answer more tactfully. "He's got at least five bodyguards all the time. Most of the school doesn't think Harry went into the maze on purpose to ruin Cedric's chances, but the Hufflepuffs… You should get Lupin to call Cedric into his office so you can talk to him. You're Lupin's favorite, he'd do it."

Harry thought of Lupin's pained reaction to what Harry had considered good news and suspected that Ron was probably right. Hermione was generally in favor of asking teachers for help, and so she agreed that it wouldn't be terrible if Harry asked Lupin for help.

"It wasn't this bad asking girls to the Yule Ball," said Ron.

"Yes, it was," said Harry, remembering Cho and Marietta and Ginny and Christianne and Parvati and Padma.

"Yes, it was," Ron agreed.

* * *

"I was wondering when you'd come," Lupin said when Harry knocked at his office door.

Harry almost asked why, but at the last minute he decided not to. He wanted a favor from Lupin, after all, and Lupin would not be impressed if he realized that Harry didn't even know why he ought to have come.

"Sit down, Harry," Lupin prompted. The door closed behind him at a wave from Lupin's wand. "Now that you've had some time to think about it, how do you feel about what Sirius and I told you this morning?"

Oh. So Lupin had expected Harry to storm into his office, as furious as Sirius had apparently been. "I don't feel any differently," said Harry. "I'd rather know I can do something before I have to do it."

"I don't know whether that surprises me or not," said Lupin. "You always do very well with your back against the wall."

Harry let his gaze drift to the wall of Lupin's office. He had had his back against that wall back in November, and he hadn't done very well then. Still, it was nice to be able to remember what had happened. There were no niggling gaps in his memory now.

"Why did you come to see me, Harry?" Lupin prompted. "Not that I don't always enjoy your company."

"So much that you decided to relive a few years of it?" asked Harry before he could consider whether Lupin would think that was funny.

But Lupin laughed. "I did think that I would try to do better with you the second time around. I tried to tell you more about your parents. Of course, I knew the most important thing I could give you was Sirius' freedom."

"And not having a mad Death Eater for a Defense professor," added Harry.

"I got the impression that you enjoyed those classes before you realized he was a mad Death Eater," said Lupin dryly. "I must admit that I incorporated his lesson plan into my own this year. It would not have occurred to me to put the Imperius Curse on students. Or if it had occurred to me, I wouldn't have dared. But I knew that you in particular needed to learn."

"I think I'd rather learn from you," said Harry sincerely. "I can't imagine anyone else being a better Defense professor."

"The day of the final battle- the day I died- I thought that I would tell you something if we both lived. I remembered how nervous I was when your mother told us that she was pregnant with you. I thought that it was the beginning of my friends moving on to lives that couldn't include me. Werewolves generally don't have children, you understand, and most parents wouldn't want their children around a werewolf. At the time, there was a law in effect that forbade me from so much as touching a baby."

"But my Mum and Dad weren't like that!" said Harry, feeling slightly insulted on behalf of his parents.

"They were not, but I was young and silly and I worried anyway. Of course, the day you were born James shoveled you into my arms as if he found my discomfort quite entertaining."

Harry grinned. He could picture it.

"You were… you were tiny, and you were delicate, and fragile, and so precious. I looked at you and your lip moved as if you were smiling. Everything that had worried me vanished right in that instant. I knew we were going to have fun together. I knew that I didn't just love you because one is required to love one's dear friends' children. I knew I was going to like you because of you, because of the boy and the man you would be. I didn't tell you before I died, so I'll tell you now."

"We saw each other even though you weren't my professor, then?"

"We did. Not very much, of course, but often we both spent the holidays at Grimmauld Place before Sirius died, or at the Burrow later."

 _Before Sirius died?_ Lupin and Sirius hadn't mentioned that. A wave of dread washed over Harry. Sirius couldn't die, he couldn't. It wouldn't be fair, not after all the years he had spent in Azkaban as an innocent man, not after all the years he and Harry had lost, not after Harry's parents had died, too.

"How did Sirius die?" asked Harry, keen to make certain that that bit of history didn't repeat itself. (Unless it _couldn't_ be changed? What did they call it on _Doctor Who_ \- a fixed point in time?)

Lupin's skin turned a grayish color, but he answered. "Voldemort lured you to the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. He wanted you to take possession of the prophecy that prompted him to attempt to murder you when you were a baby. He tricked you into thinking he had Sirius and was hurting him. You rushed to rescue Sirius, and when Sirius realized where you had gone, he rushed after you. There was a rather large battle, and Sirius did not survive."

"So it was my fault." He wondered how Sirius and Lupin could even stand to look at him.

"No," said Lupin. "It was the fault of any number of people, starting with Lord Voldemort himself, but it was not your fault."

"It won't happen again," said Harry firmly.

"It will not," said Lupin, just as calmly as if he had been reassuring a frightened third year about a boggart. "Voldemort is in no position to lure anyone to the Department of Mysteries. You have your mirror so that you can check on Sirius if you become concerned about him. And Sirius is a free man whose dueling form is much sharper than it was back then."

"All right," Harry agreed.

"As that's settled," said Lupin, "Why did you come to see me today? No cheeky answers this time, Harry."

Cedric had died, and then Sirius had died, and both times Harry had been there and hadn't done anything about it. No wonder Lupin had thought they could do better. Somehow, talking to Cedric seemed both more and less important. He had to apologize to Cedric both for himself and for the other Harry- the Harry who had had a Death Eater for a Defense professor and a dead fugitive godfather.

"I wanted advice on how to apologize to Cedric for almost killing him and costing him the Triwizard Championship."

"You did not almost kill Cedric, Harry. Voldemort did. And as for the Triwizard Tournament, I hope you were listening when Professor Dumbledore spoke at the feast."

Harry just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "I still want to say I'm sorry, but if I go up to him he'll have to keep his friends from telling me how awful I am, and it won't be a very good apology."

"I quite understand," said Lupin. "I believe I can suggest the perfect opportunity. Cedric has been meeting with each of his professors in turn. As the school's champion, he was exempt from exams, but still needs to be certain that he will be properly prepared for his NEWTS next year. He should be finishing up in my office around 10:00 tomorrow morning. If you, coincidentally, happened to pass by around then…"

Harry grinned. He hadn't expected Lupin to make it so easy.

"Now," said Lupin, "I'm sure you'll find a way to amuse yourself until then? I believe that most of the school is currently either splashing about in the lake or supervising the rebuilding of the Quidditch pitch. Perhaps you and Ron and Hermione should join them."

"We will," said Harry. It did sound like fun, and he did want to spend as much time with Ron and Hermione as he could before he returned to the Dursleys.

"It wasn't an order, Harry."

"I know."

"You look rather like you're marching to your execution."

"And you would know what I look like when I'm marching to my execution," Harry agreed.

Lupin smiled, but Harry could tell that he didn't find Harry's comment funny. "In fact, on the day you went into battle against Voldemort for the last time, you were- you were too focused and too much in control to look as sad as you look now."

Harry hadn't realized he looked sad. He considered lying, but decided against it. He thought Lupin would probably understand. "I'm always sad right before the summer holidays start. I'd rather be at Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione than in Little Whinging with the Dursleys."

"It's not too late to change your mind. I know that Sirius-"

"I'm not changing my mind," said Harry firmly. "My mum left me this protection when I died, and I'm not throwing it away."

"It's your decision, of course, and as usual you've decided wisely," said Lupin, but Harry was sure that he saw Lupin writing a note to Sirius as Harry left the office.

* * *

It took some doing to convince Hermione to walk down to the Quidditch pitch and then the lake, but Harry and Ron managed it. The beautiful afternoon stretched into a beautiful evening, and Harry wished that time- obviously so much more flexible than he had ever considered- could stop and let those hours last for a year.

* * *

The next morning, Harry made his way to Lupin's office at the appointed time. He didn't bring his invisibility cloak (temporarily hidden in Ron's trunk); instead, he stood in plain sight to eavesdrop on Lupin and Cedric as he had once eavesdropped on Lupin and Karkaroff.

Unlike Karkaroff, Cedric didn't seem to think that Lupin had a secret plan to eliminate all former Death Eaters. (It suddenly occurred to Harry that Karkaroff hadn't been entirely wrong to fear Lupin and Sirius.) Cedric was talking excitedly about the counter-jinxes and dueling Lupin was planning for the seventh years next term.

"You're more than prepared," Lupin told Cedric. "If anything, I fear you'll be bored. Perhaps I'll turn the class over to you, and you can teach it."

"I can't imagine being bored in one of your classes," said Cedric, and Harry knew it wasn't just flattery. He felt the same way.

Harry knocked on the open door. Cedric smiled at him, and Lupin quickly made an excuse to vanish into his private rooms.

"I know it's not enough," said Harry, deciding not to waste any time. "But I wanted to thank you and tell you that I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" asked Cedric. He sounded genuinely puzzled, and if Cedric had been almost anyone else Harry would have suspected him of having him on.

"For ruining your chances in the Tournament," said Harry. "And for trying to kill you. Not that I meant to try to kill you, but I… I could have not walked into Karkaroff's trap."

"I'm glad you're all right," said Cedric. "Apology not accepted, because you have nothing to apologize for."

"I bet your dad won't feel that way," said Harry without thinking.

"My dad's an adult. He can get over it. You heard what Dumbledore said. There are more important things."

 _More important things like Cedric living through the Tournament._ Harry wondered what Dumbledore would have said to the assembled students in the Great Hall if Cedric had died.

"You look sad." It was the second time in two days that someone had stood in this room and told Harry that he looked sad.

"I was just thinking about the diadem," Harry lied quickly, since he could hardly tell Cedric about time traveling professors and how Cedric was meant to be dead. "It's a shame that something that could have done so much good was used for something so horrible."

Cedric seemed to accept that. "It was an amazing artifact. It should have belonged to all witches and wizards. Instead it was used to hurt you. I'm so sorry for what you went through, Harry. I wish I'd told everyone I was sure of what I saw in the lake. I should be the one asking you to forgive me for not protecting you when you were my hostage."

Harry shook his head. "If you're not accepting my apology, than I'm not accepting yours."

"Right, then. We'll still be mates next year in that case."

"You'll be Head Boy and I cause too much trouble," said Harry.

"All the more reason for me to keep an eye on you. Besides, there's going to be more dueling in Defense classes next year, and I might need you as a sparring partner. I don't have the right one in my own class."

"I don't either," Harry said. "Lupin usually has me go against three at once."

"Me as well. It's useful, but it's not the same as going against one person who really challenges you."

A strange sensation always washed over Harry when he realized, for a fact, that someone actually liked him. The oddest thing about visiting the Burrow for the first time (and there were many odd things about the Burrow) had been walking from room to room and not meeting any disdainful looks or nasty laughter.

Several people had implied over the course of year that he and Cedric were friends, but he hadn't quite understood that _Cedric_ thought that they were friends. He had Hagrid and Hermione and Ron and the other Weasleys, and that was already more friends than he had ever hoped for when he'd been seated across the room from Dudley at St. Grogory's Primary School.

He wished Cedric a happy summer and returned to Gryffindor Tower feeling much lighter.

* * *

The weather could not have been more different on the journey back to King's Cross than it had been on their way to Hogwarts the previous September. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Harry, Ron, and Hermione managed to get a compartment to themselves. Hedwig and Cannon dozed, their heads under their wings, and Crookshanks was curled up in a spare seat like a large, furry ginger cushion.

Harry's trunk met him at the train station. He had half-suspected that Sirius wouldn't give it back, wouldn't let him go to the Dursleys no matter what Harry said. Perhaps he had even half-hoped it. Instead, he rummaged through the trunk to see that Sirius had modified it as promised. There was dried fruit and meat and crackers; there was Muggle money and healing potions. He added the rest of his possessions, which had been tucked into a bag slung over his shoulder, and stowed the trunk for the journey.

The train was always an opportunity to speak freely. Last spring, Hermione had told Harry and Ron about her time-turner. This year, Harry told Ron and Hermione a bit of what Lupin and Sirius had told him about the prophecy, the protection granted to him by his mother's blood, and the dangerous artifacts left behind by Voldemort. Ron and Hermione promised to help in any way that they could.

The rest of the journey passed pleasantly enough, and all too soon, the Hogwarts Express was pulling in at platform nine and three-quarters. The usual confusion and noise filled the corridors as the students began to disembark.

Uncle Vernon was waiting beyond the barrier. Mrs. Weasley was close by him. She hugged Harry very tightly when she saw him and whispered in his ear, "Of course you'll come to us later in the summer. Keep in touch, Harry."

"See you, Harry," said Ron, clapping him on the back.

"Bye, Harry!" said Hermione, and she did something that she had never done before, and kissed him on the cheek.

Harry glanced around. Sirius hadn't seen him off at Hogsmeade; he hadn't greeted him in London, either. Of course, Harry had refused to go straight to Sirius' house this summer, but he wouldn't have minded Sirius turning up to say goodbye. He thought again of what Lupin had told him of Sirius' death. He remembered, too, the feeling he had had when he had last seen Sirius that they were saying goodbye forever. A jolt of fear ran down his spine. Had Sirius failed to deliver the trunk himself because something had gone wrong?

Harry turned to Uncle Vernon and followed him silently from the station. There was no point in worrying, he told himself as he got into the back of the Dursleys' car. He had faced Voldemort before, and he had succeeded. He would succeed again, and this time his success would not come at the cost of Cedric's and Lupin's and Sirius' lives.

As they drove to Little Whinging, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept up a running commentary on how Dudley would not be home that evening because he had been invited for tea by a different friend every night since he'd come home for the summer. Harry immediately suspected that Dudley and his gang were telling their parents dim-witted lies and were really smoking on street corners and vandalizing the play park. Not that Harry minded, of course. It was almost pleasant to sit in the back of the car and ignore his aunt and uncle without having to dodge Dudley's fists.

As soon as they arrived at Privet Drive, Aunt Petunia ordered Harry to set about chopping vegetables, which he did agreeably enough. Helping Aunt Petunia in the kitchen was one of the least odious chores the Dursleys assigned him. It would have been almost enjoyable if only Aunt Petunia had not been there.

Since Dudley and his diet were not expected home, Aunt Petunia was cooking a meal that was more reminiscent of what the Dursleys had eaten when Harry and Dudley had been in primary school. There were vegetables, yes, but there was also a roast and a good amount of potatoes. Harry knew that he would be given the smallest portion, but without the need to reassure Dudley that he was getting more than Harry, Harry's portion might be of a reasonable size.

Even if it wasn't, Harry reminded himself, he was properly prepared this year. He would have more than stale birthday cake to assuage his hunger.

They had just sat down at the table (it was strange to eat with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia but not Dudley) when a knock sounded at the front door.

Uncle Vernon rose from his chair, muttering loudly about people who didn't know when it was and was not appropriate to visit. Harry twisted around to see the front door; he even stood up, as there was no need to worry that Dudley would steal the food from his plate, or upend Aunt Petunia's wine glass and blame Harry.

Harry was not disappointed.

At the front door stood Sirius, dressed in expensive Muggle clothes and carrying a small suitcase.

"Hello," he said, extending his hand for Uncle Vernon to shake. "I'm Sirius Black, Harry's godfather. I don't know if you remember me, but we'll be getting to know each other very well over the next few weeks. You see, I understand that your guest bedroom gets very little use, and so I'm going to be moving in with you."

**_To be continued._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Some quotations from the last few pages of Goblet of Fire during the train ride and in King's Cross.


	51. Sirius, Apperceiving

Vernon Dursley stared wordlessly at Sirius.

Sirius, too, remained silent. Sirius knew the power of silence. He had learned it as a child. His brother's silence had kept their family's attention on Sirius. His father's silence had reinforced his mother's yelling in a way that yelling alongside her never could have done. And even his mother had known the value of well-placed silence. She had known well how to stand toe-to-toe with an adversary, speaking without speaking. _Don't you know that I am a Black? Don't you know that I can buy and sell you? I am above the law. My wants are more important than your needs. I am a Black!_

He was a Black.

He wouldn't fill the air with clever words. No, he would let Vernon Dursley bluster his way into a mistake.

Or not.

Either way, he would get what he had come for.

Harry stepped into view behind his uncle. Sirius gave him the slightest glance of acknowledgement, which Harry returned with a nod. He watched the proceedings with interest, apparently content not to interfere.

"I don't mean to be rude," said Vernon at last, "but you are not going to stay in my guest room."

"I'm afraid I am," said Sirius. "It's the only bedroom available since you no longer force my godson to sleep in a cupboard."

 _"You are not going to stay anywhere in my house!"_ Vernon's face had begun to turn purple, but his roar was nothing compared to what Sirius had heard in his childhood home, let alone Azkaban. He was not intimidated in the least, but with every second he grew more coldly furious as he contemplated the years that Harry had been subjected to this man.

Of course, Harry was not easily intimidated either. From what Sirius understood, he had mostly laughed behind his uncle's back and privately described the man as a walrus.

"You should be careful," said Sirius. "The neighbors will hear you."

And that was when Petunia Dursley rushed past her husband and pulled Sirius inside.

"Thank you, Petunia." Sirius inclined his head gravely.

"You are not staying. You may take the boy and leave."

"You know I can't do that, Petunia," said Sirius, as quiet as ever. He set his traveling case on the floor. "You received a letter from Albus Dumbledore fourteen years ago in November explaining that because you are Lily's last blood relative, the sacrifice she made when she died for her son lives on in you. Harry needs to have a home with you lest you squander that protection."

Harry finally spoke. "You knew?" he asked Petunia.

She whirled on Harry, still towering over him even though he was nearly fifteen. (Harry was due for a growth spurt or two. He was a late bloomer, just as James had been.) "Of course we knew!"

"You never told me," said Harry.

"We have no interest in discussing… _magic_ ." She spat the word the way Sirius' mother would have spat the word _Mudblood_ . How was it that Petunia had more in common with Walburga Black than she had ever had with Lily? "And while we may be required to house my sister's son, we are not required to house you. When Albus Dumbledore forced that child upon me, he agreed that my family would not have to have any contact with your kind."

"That was when I was in Azkaban," said Sirius. "I would never have allowed for such an arrangement."

"Azka- what?" blustered Vernon.

"The wizard prison," said Petunia. "I remember that awful boy telling Lily about it-"

"My dad was not an awful boy!" shouted Harry, just as Vernon began to rage that while he wouldn't have any kind of wizard in his house, he most certainly would not have a criminal wizard in his house, he would call Azkenbarn himself.

"Didn't you tell them that I was innocent and my name was cleared?" Sirius asked Harry.

"I forgot that bit," said Harry.

Vernon glowered at Harry. Harry remained unperturbed.

Sirius took the opportunity to address Petunia, who appeared to be just slightly more reasonable than her husband. "You will tell the neighbors that your very handsome, very posh guest is a professor from Harry's school. Where have you told them he's been?"

"St. Brutus' Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys." If Sirius hadn't known better (he did know better), he would almost have thought Petunia felt some sense of shame at the lie.

"I assume you've also told them he's a particularly difficult case? Disturbed by losing his parents at such a tender age, perhaps?" She didn't answer. She didn't have to. "Then it only makes sense that the school would send someone to help monitor him during the summer. You may tell the neighbors all about it. If I meet them-"

 _"You won't meet them!"_ thundered Vernon.

"Of course I shall meet them. I am, as I say, very handsome and very posh and as a result they will want to meet me. When we speak, I can tell them what a noble thing you have done, raising your nephew all these years when he has had no one else who can do for him what you can. Or, alternatively, I can turn into a dog and sniff them in inappropriate places."

Harry laughed. "You've never actually done that, have you?"

"It was a dare," said Sirius. "All your dad's fault, it was."

He glanced beyond Harry into the kitchen. The table was set, and a roast was cooling; obviously, Harry's first night home hadn't warranted the use of the more formal dining room Sirius knew was positioned on the other side of the stairs. "I see I've interrupted your dinner. My apologies. Let us resume."

He drew his wand and summoned an extra place setting before magically duplicating the food on Vernon's plate for himself and the food on Petunia's plate for Harry.

"I thought you couldn't conjure food!" Harry objected. "Gamp's Law, and all that."

"You can increase food if you already have some," Sirius began, but the rest of the explanation was drowned out by clatter of Petunia sweeping the contents of her plate, along with that of her husband, into the rubbish bin.

"We don't know what he could have done to it," she explained to Vernon, who looked rather taken aback.

She did not, however, smash the plates themselves, which meant that her reaction wasn't quite as emphatic as Sirius' mother's had been the day she had accidentally allowed a Muggle-born witch to dine at her table.

"He didn't cast any magi- rather, he didn't do anything to the food that still on the serving platter," said Vernon hopefully.

Sirius decided not to confirm that he hadn't. Instead, he signaled to Harry that they should begin eating and complimented the food. (It wasn't a word of a lie; Harry's aunt was a good cook.)

Vernon and Petunia refilled their plates and took refuge in the dining room, leaving the kitchen to Harry and Sirius.

"Do you think this is going to work?" Harry asked in a low voice. "If they walk out- if they abandon me- won't that break the protections?"

"Probably," said Sirius, who was tired of hearing about the protections at this point. They might have protected Harry from Death Eaters and Voldemort once, but he was here for that now. "But I don't think they'll leave. They take too much pride in their home. They tried to stop you going to Hogwarts even when that meant running and taking you with them."

Harry seemed to accept that. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

"I wasn't sure that I was. I didn't come up with the idea until after the last time I saw you. I didn't come up with the idea at all, I'm ashamed to say. Remus did. I don't know why I didn't think of it. He doesn't know why he didn't think of it sooner."

"I thought I saw him write you a note when I was in his office the other day," Harry remembered.

"I didn't want to get your hopes up if I wasn't able to manage it."

"You got permission from Dumbledore? And the Ministry?" Harry craned his neck about as if looking for something. "No one has sent me a warning for doing underage magic yet."

"I _informed_ Dumbledore and the Ministry," Sirius corrected. "I don't need permission. But I did have a very long chat with Dumbledore and Remus about the Horcruxes. We destroyed another one- I told you about the ring I found last January?"

Harry nodded, his mouth full.

"It was Salazar Slytherin's ring. Dumbledore told me at length how impressed he was that I was able to deduce where Voldemort hid it. I wasn't certain whether to be offended that he was so shocked or flattered that he described my intelligence in such glowing terms."

"Everyone talks about how clever you are," said Harry.

"By everyone, you mean Remus? He's biased. Of course, I think he's brilliant, too. I'm slightly concerned about Dumbledore's plans to go through his memories bit by bit these next few weeks. I may Apparate up to Hogsmeade a few times to make certain he hasn't…" What, precisely? Had a complete psychotic breakdown? It was Sirius, not Remus, who seemed to be prone to those. "To make certain he's all right, reliving all of those memories," Sirius corrected lamely.

"And the next full moon is on July 12," added Harry. "So you'll have to go to Hogsmeade then, as well."

For an instant, Sirius was rendered speechless by how completely Harry had incorporated the lunar calendar into his schedule. It had been one thing when he and James and Wormtail had done it at Harry's age; Remus was their friend, and they shared a room ten months out of the year. But to Harry, Remus was a professor and Sirius was a come-lately-godfather, and Harry had many too many problems of his own. "We'll see," said Sirius. "I ought to owl Tonks and tell her to make sure that he's bought Wolfsbane Potion." Remus might actually listen to the woman he still thought of as his wife. Sirius remained a bit annoyed that Remus hadn't told him how difficult the potion was to obtain, and how costly, the moment Sirius had been released from Azkaban the previous summer. "Of course, any time I go up there, you can come and wander around the village if you'd like."

"Lupin's not going back to Yorkshire this summer?"

"Not right away. He's staying in my house- our house. I suppose we ought to have asked your permission, as it is meant to be yours as much as mine."

"Of course he should stay there," said Harry, as Sirius had known he would. Harry was so kind, and so generous. Sirius wondered how that had happened considering that Harry had grown up… here, with these people who couldn't even stand to eat at their kitchen table with him after he'd been away for nearly a year. "The professors can't stay in the castle during the holidays?"

"I don't know whether it's allowed, but I've never known of one who did. Hagrid and Flich are usually on the grounds, and the professors come and go if they're preparing for the new term."

Harry smiled mischievously. "I wonder where Snape goes? A dungeon or a cave? There's nowhere dark and damp enough for him to be happy."

Sirius chuckled as he cleaned the dishes with a wave of his wand and produced a cake he'd brought from the bakery in Hogsmeade. Harry's eyes widened at the sight. He hadn't been away from Hogwarts for twelve hours, and yet he looked at the cake as if he had been starved of all good things for a year.

Sirius wasn't surprised.

He'd always felt like dying in those first few days away from James and Remus and Wormtail. It had never taken more than a few minutes for the pain to set in.

Harry pulled a knife from the kitchen drawer and plated the cake perfectly. (If Sirius had tried that without magic, the first slice of cake would have crumbled into a mess. The list of ways in which Harry impressed Sirius was endless.)

"I missed this so much," Harry said around his first mouthful. "I know we only just left Hogwarts, but-"

"I quite understand," said Sirius.

 _"Bye, Dud!"_ a voice called from outside the house.

_"See you, Big D!"_

_"Same time tomorrow?"_

_"Round my place, my parents are out."_

The front door opened and closed, and Dudley Dursley loomed in the entrance to the kitchen a moment later.

"Hey, Big D!" said Harry, his voice bright with sarcasm. Whatever concerns he had had about his cousin last Christmas had vanished.

"Oh, it's you," Dudley grunted. Sirius couldn't quite judge the boy for his lack of enthusiasm. He and his brother had often greeted one another the same way after months spent apart. And of course, by the end, he and Bellatrix had always exchanged hexes instead of greetings.

"How long have you been 'Big D,' then?" asked Harry.

"Shut it," said Dudley.

"You'll always be Ickle Diddykins to me."

"I said, shut it!" said Dudley as he lunged forward.

Sirius let his wand fall into his hand, ready to intervene in the event that Harry wasn't able to handle himself, but Dudley didn't reach for Harry. Instead, he reached for the cake and shoveled a great piece of it into his mouth.

"You know that's wizard cake, right, Big D?" asked Harry. "My godfather brought it from Hogsmeade. That's the only all-wizarding village in Britain, founded over a thousand years ago by Hengist of Woodcroft."

Dudley froze, and his eyes widened with terror. He bolted from the room. Harry laughed. Petunia screamed. And Vernon stormed back into the kitchen, purple-faced, to grab Harry by the collar.

"Put him right!" Vernon bellowed.

"Let go of him!" snarled Sirius. He pointed his wand at Vernon and tried to calm his anger enough that a stunning spell would be harmless. No, not a stunner- he ought to use _Petrificus Totalus._

Vernon tightened his grip on Harry. "My son for your godson."

"There's nothing wrong with him!" Harry shouted back at his uncle. "Nothing wrong with him that wasn't wrong already. _All it is is cake!_ I was eating it! Sirius was eating it! There's no difference between wizard cake and regular cake except maybe the batter was stirred by an enchantment instead of a KitchenAid!"

To Sirius' shock, Vernon let Harry go. Sirius let his arm fall to his side, but he didn't tuck his wand away, not just yet. "Let's see you eat it, then."

Harry rolled his eyes and picked up his fork. He locked eyes with his uncle as he chewed and swallowed. "It's just cake," he repeated. "Chocolate. Sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs, milk, vanilla-"

"And how do you know so precisely what's in it?"

Harry rolled his eyes again. "Because I've been helping Aunt Petunia in the kitchen since before I was tall enough to see over the counter?"

"He only got tall enough to see over the counter last year, anyway," said Dudley, who suddenly seemed less terrified.

Harry made an obscene gesture in Dudley's direction when his aunt and uncle weren't looking. Sirius lowered his eyes so he wouldn't laugh out loud.

"How did you feel, Diddykins?" asked Petunia. Dudley cringed, and Sirius was suddenly glad that his parents had never liked him enough to bother with pet names. Remus still called him _Padfoot_ , of course, but that was silly rather than mortifying.

"I feel all right," Dudley answered.

"Why did you eat it?"

Dudley looked sideways at Sirius. "I didn't realize he was a wizard. I didn't think about who he was. You- I didn't think you'd let a wizard sit and eat at your kitchen table."

"You've had a wizard sitting and eating at your kitchen table every day since we were one year old," Harry pointed out.

Sirius looked past the boys at Petunia. "And I can't imagine that Lily never brought Honeydukes sweets home at the end of the school year. Even if you never ate them, I'm sure that you saw your parents eat them and survive without any ill effects."

With a hard look on her face, Petunia strode forward and tasted the cake. "It's too dense," she said. "Too much sugar."

"Wizards put more sugar in everything than Muggles do," said Harry. "I think it has to do with the amount of energy you burn casting spells. Like the Patronus Charm, that's more of a workout than-"

"We don't want to hear it!" snapped Vernon.

"I'll make you a better cake tomorrow, Dudley," said Petunia, and both Vernon's and Dudley's faces lit up. "One cake won't ruin your diet, now that you're training all the time."

"Excellent," said Sirius, even though he still wanted to murder all of Harry's living relatives. He gave a wave of his wand, and suddenly the dishes were clean and the remains of the cake were wrapped snuggly and stored on the counter. "Now that that's settled, Harry and I will resume our conversation about where Severus Snape spends his holidays, which was interrupted by young Dudley's arrival."

He smirked to himself.

He knew how to handle this.

Vernon and Dudley Dursley were afraid of magic in all of its forms; that was clear.

Petunia Dursley wasn't afraid. She couldn't have been, not after growing up with Lily. If Sirius wanted to take a tiny bit of revenge for the way the Dursleys had treated Harry, and yet still remain where he was for the next several weeks, he would do it not with magic but with information.

If he had learned nothing else in the year he had spent as a free man, he had learned the power of the past.

He turned back to Harry.

"As it happens, I know where Snape spends his holidays. Remus overheard and repeated it to me. Remus thinks it's sad, of course, but you know how Remus gets to be too forgiving because he wants everyone to like him."

Harry looked at Sirius as if he hadn't known that at all. "So where does Snape spend his holidays?"

"Cokeworth," said Sirius, carefully keeping the meanness out of his voice.

Petunia paled. Vernon looked concerned. Neither Harry nor Dudley seemed to have any idea of the significance of the name.

Sirius briefly remembered that he'd made a conscious decision not to tell Harry that Lily and Snape had been childhood friends. He'd even specifically told Tonks not to mention it.

He decided that it wasn't that important after all.

"Where's Cokeworth?" asked Harry. "The Midlands?"

"It's where we went when Dad went mad and we were running away from those letters," said Dudley, to everyone's shock. "The year we turned eleven. It was called the Railview Hotel. It was in Cokeworth."

"It was where Lily and Petunia grew up," Sirius continued. He glanced at Petunia. "No accent at all anymore. I'm impressed. I could barely understand a word Lily said when I first met her, she had such a thick Brummie accent. Of course, my own parents barely let me out of that house in London, so I had no experience in trying to understand people who had lives that differed from mine in any way."

Harry was staring at him, riveted. As he had hoped, Dudley was just as interested.

"Lily and Severus Snape were childhood friends," he told Harry. "Snape's a half-blood, which makes his Death Eater sympathies all the more bizarre. Cokeworth… it's all Muggle industry, or it was. Grimy. Factories. Small streets, small houses."

"That's enough!" snapped Vernon.

Sirius quite agreed. Anything else he said would be anticlimactic. Revealing that Lily and Petunia Evans had been that thing so abhorred by both his own family and the Dursleys- working class- had had an effect like nothing else could.

He'd seen his mother cut other women this way a thousand times. The only reason his family had tolerated his friendship with James, blood traitor though James was, had been James' money.

"Come, Harry," he directed. "Let's go upstairs. You can help me move into the guest room."

 _"The guest room?"_ Dudley squeaked behind them.

* * *

There wasn't much to be done to move Sirius into the guest room. Harry showed Sirius where it was, and Sirius threw his case on a chair.

"You really couldn't understand my mum when you met her?" asked Harry after a moment.

"I could, but it was an effort," said Sirius. "I had to think about it when I was talking to her. Of course, she rather disliked me so we didn't speak very often in those early years."

Harry sat on the bed, contemplating that.

"You've seen my memories, and Remus' memories," Sirius added. "You heard the way Snape and Lily talked on the train, and that way your dad and I talked."

"How did my dad talk?" asked Harry, as if he had never seen any such thing. Perhaps he'd been so overwhelmed that he somehow hadn't noticed.

"He was rich, like I was, and he grew up lonely, like I did. But he wasn't as isolated as I was. Potter Manor was out in West Country, and he picked up some of the way the Muggles there spoke. He'd say, oh, _all right, my babber_ ? Or _hark at ee!_ "

"But you and he could understand each other right away?"

"It was Remus we had trouble with. The Welsh accent used to be much stronger than it is now. Hogwarts makes equals of us all, except when I get truly angry and start talking like a Black again."

He'd been a Black all day. It was how he'd slipped past Petunia. It was how he had maneuvered his way into the guest bedroom. She was now too disconcerted, too distracted by her son's questioning looks, to throw him out.

"And- my mum and Snape?" asked Harry. "They were really-"

"Childhood friends, yes. I don't imagine he ever forgave your dad for winning her love."

"Was he- did he love her?"

That was a question Sirius didn't want to contemplate too deeply. "I think he thought he did. I find it difficult to believe that he could have truly loved her if he's able to treat you the way he does."

"Am I like my mum at all? Other than my eyes? Everyone always tells me how much I'm like my dad."

"You do look remarkably like your father. You know that. And it's easiest for Remus and me to see your father in you because we spent so much time with him. Lily and James didn't start going out until their seventh year, and that was only a few years before they died." Harry nodded stiffly. "But regardless of where they came from or what they looked like or how they spoke, your parents were very alike in the most important ways, Harry. They believed in justice and mercy and putting their lives on the line for a cause they believed in. They were terribly brave. They were loyal to their friends. They were both very clever and very cheeky. I don't imagine you ever had a chance but to be the sort of person who convinces his cousin that chocolate cake is somehow dangerous."

Harry's smile was weak.

"Your mum was kind. Not that your dad couldn't be, when he wanted to- neither Remus and I would be the people we are if it weren't for your dad. But your mum… she was kind in a different way, in a bigger way. I think that's something you got from her."

Harry cast his eyes down, still not answering.

Sirius had no idea how to extricate himself from this.

Then he did.

"So while I'm here, do you think I can see this Doctor Who thing you and Remus were talking about over my head?"

And Harry laughed.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer : Some quotations from the first chapter of Order of the Phoenix during Harry's reunion with Dudley


	52. Sirius, Godfathering

Sirius hadn't expected to sleep on his first night in the Dursley's home, and it was with no particular disappointment that he found himself propped against a pillow in the guest bedroom doing a crossword puzzle in the early hours of the morning. Insomnia had been a normal state of affairs for most of his life. At Grimmauld Place, he'd worried about what his mother might send the house-elves to do to him in his sleep. During the war, he'd been constantly ready for an attack. At Azkaban, the chill and the shrieking had made it hard to tell night from day. And after his trial, he'd been haunted by visions of his youth. He'd only slept well with any sort of consistency during his years as a student at Hogwarts.

_"No… Cedric…"_

He sprang off the bed at the sound of Harry's voice, casting _lumos_ as he went, and entered Harry's small bedroom without knocking.

By the light of his wand, he could see that Harry had thrashed the covers from the bed. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his face; his eyes moved frantically behind closed lids.

Sirius swore, mentally, in every language that he knew.

Harry wasn't meant to have dreams like this. James and Lily had died, and Sirius and Remus had suffered, so that Harry and his friends wouldn't have to be child soldiers in a magical war. It all should have been over before Harry was old enough to understand it.

During the height of the war, it had been dangerous to wake his friends from a nightmare. James and Lily and Remus had all been perfectly capable of drawing their wands in their sleep and hexing anyone foolish enough to touch them.

Harry was underage, and Harry technically shouldn't have had any reason to sleep with his wand, but considering how the last few years had gone for Harry…

" _Accio_ ," said Sirius quietly. Harry's wand flew into his hand. Sirius placed both his wand and Harry's on top of the bookcase. Then he approached the bed and took Harry by the shoulders.

 _"Get off! Get off!"_ Whatever Harry was dreaming, having his shoulders pinned to the bed made it more frightening, not less.

"It's Sirius, Harry," he said hoarsely. He hated this. Harry didn't deserve this. _He_ had terrible dreams and terrible memories, and that meant that _Harry_ shouldn't have to have them. "It's your godfather. I would never let anyone hurt you. You're safe, you're home…"

 _Home_ . He hated that, too. This wasn't Harry's home and they both knew it.

"Everyone you care about is just fine."

"The dementor…"

"No dementors here," said Sirius with an involuntary shudder. "If there were a dementor in this house, I would look at you and I would cast the brightest, strongest Patronus anyone had ever seen."

That was when Harry's eyes flew open and he threw his arms around Sirius.

Sirius hugged Harry back just as tightly. "No dementors," he whispered in Harry's ear. "No Death Eaters. Everyone you love is safe, Harry."

He hadn't held Harry like this in almost fourteen years. They'd shared a few quick hugs, and Sirius had all but carried Harry to the Hospital Wing after Karkaroff's attack, and occasionally Harry leaned against him, but he had always been well aware that Harry had lived most of his life far away.

 _This_ felt as if he and Harry had never been apart. _This_ felt as if they were family, and Harry was his best friend's son, and Sirius was not an utter failure as a godfather.

He cursed himself for enjoying it.

A few hours before, he'd been grateful that his parents hadn't liked him enough to call him by a pet name. Now, he almost understood the temptation to channel Petunia and call his godson _poppet_ .

"I love you," he whispered instead. He hadn't said _I love you_ to anyone since the fall of Voldemort. He'd barely said it _before_ the fall of Voldemort. "Love you, love you, love you."

Harry pulled back from him, skin still too pale, eyes still too bright.

Sirius remembered how desperate he'd been to get away from Remus when Remus had dared to suggest that they _talk about_ the things Sirius had said the night he'd sobbed his heart out to the wolf. He remembered the night he'd left his parents for the last time and would have left James' house, too, if James' mother hadn't distracted him with a crossword puzzle.

He decided not to give Harry a chance to attempt to escape. He didn't take his hand off of Harry even though Harry had shifted away from his embrace.

"Remember how I told you that the Firebolt was 12 years' worth of birthday and Christmas presents from your godfather?"

"Yeah," said Harry.

"Consider the past five minutes something else you should have had from your godfather when you were four and five and six years old."

He thought again of Félicité and Marianne, and how angry he had been that Harry's torments, unlike Marianne's, had never ended. "Want to tell me about the dream?" Sirius asked instead of raging at the world. "Saying it out loud can make it seem less real."

"I know it wasn't real," said Harry. "But it was real once. Before Professor Lupin did what he did, Cedric did die, and so did you."

"Remus told you that?" demanded Sirius, more than a little annoyed. It wasn't Remus' business to tell his godson whether he died or not. His death was personal. That he only knew about his own death because of Remus was irrelevant. "I'm going to spit in his Wolfsbane Potion next month."

"Wouldn't that upset the balance of ingredients and make the potion useless?" asked Harry.

"Don't ever let Snivellus tell you that you don't understand potion-making," said Sirius. "Reciting the ingredients of a cake, and now this. No, Harry, I am not really going to spit in the potion Remus needs to stay sane. I'm probably going to send him a strongly worded owl. Is that acceptable?"

"Not if you're going to put stuff that's supposed to be a secret in writing. Didn't you tell me after I sent you that long letter from the World Cup last year that-"

Sirius flung himself backward onto the bed, the better to submit to the lecture. (Harry was right, of course, and Sirius wouldn't really have done either of the things he'd threatened to do. But being lectured by Harry was both wonderful and terrible. Soon Harry might start giving Sirius those looks that normal teenagers gave their parents-or-parental-substitutes: those looks that said in no uncertain terms that they pitied their elders for being so abysmally stupid.)

Harry gave Sirius a gentle shove. "Go back to your room. I'm going back to sleep."

Sirius was glad to hear it. "See you in the morning."

* * *

He heard Harry before he saw him the next morning. Against all odds, Sirius had managed to fall asleep, and he woke to the sound of two teenagers arguing in the hall.

_"Is the ickle boxing champ frightened of nasty Harry's wand?"_

_"Not this brave last night, were you?" sneered Dudley._

_"Last night was when you ran to mummy and daddy because you thought the big bad chocolate cake was going to attack you."_

_"I mean when you were in bed!"_

_"What do you mean, I wasn't brave in bed? D'you reckon I was frightened of the pillows or something?"_

_"I heard you last night. Talking in your sleep. Moaning." Dudley gave a harsh bark of laughter and then adopted a high-pitched, whimpering voice. "'Don't kill Cedric! Don't kill Cedric!' Who's Cedric- your boyfriend?"_

Sirius decided it was past time to make his appearance. Dudley took a step back as soon as the door swung open.

"In fact, Dudley," said Sirius in his most professorial voice (which wasn't anything like as good as Remus' professorial voice, but that was to be expected), "Cedric is one of Harry's classmates who was nearly murdered last week by the same wizard who murdered your Aunt Lily and Uncle James. I'd be a bit concerned if Harry wasn't taking the matter seriously, wouldn't you?"

Dudley didn't say anything. He took another step back so that he was pressed against the wall.

"I don't know how much your parents have explained about how the magical protections in your blood work-"

"There's no magic in my blood," interrupted Dudley.

"You and Harry have a set of grandparents in common-"

"We've never even met them," said Dudley.

"I saw them," said Harry. "I saw them at my Mum and Dad's wedding. Sirius showed me. Wizards have ways of showing each other their memories as easy as watching television. Our grandparents were so proud of Mum. No wonder Aunt Petunia's always been jealous."

Sirius gave up on trying to explain to Dudley that it might be in his best interest not to behave so unpleasantly toward Harry. It wasn't the right time, not least because Harry was equally, if justifiably, set on behaving unpleasantly toward Dudley.

They all went downstairs for breakfast. Harry automatically began to help his aunt with the cooking. Petunia scolded Harry for his lateness and laziness but seemed oddly content with the quality of his work. Sirius would have to ask Harry, later, if he actually _enjoyed_ cooking. He couldn't very well ask in front of the Dursleys, who would stop Harry doing it if it occurred to them that he took some pleasure in it.

"You're leaving today," Vernon informed Sirius as they seated themselves around the table.

"We'll discuss it later," said Sirius pleasantly. "A discussion now would be very loud and would make you late for work, besides. People would talk."

Vernon and Petunia exchanged a small nod. _Nothing_ was worse than people talking.

And so Sirius bought himself another day. It would be a challenge to keep putting the Dursleys off and distracting them at least twice a day for several weeks, but Sirius thought that he could manage it.

* * *

Soon after Vernon left for the office, but before Petunia had finished laying out a list of chores for Harry to perform (clean the windows, mow the lawn, trim the flowerbeds, prune the roses, paint the garden bench), an owl swooped over the house and dropped a letter beside the front door. Sirius casually picked it up. It was addressed not to Harry, but to Sirius himself.

"Flagstone Dueling Club is meeting tonight," Sirius told Harry when they were safely outside. Harry was pretending to trim the flowerbeds and prune the roses, but Sirius was surreptitiously doing most of the work with magic. "Do you want to come?"

"Are you kidding?" asked Harry, looking far too excited for someone on his hands and knees in a flower bed. "Of course I want to come. How old do you need to be to join?"

"Seventeen, at minimum. I don't imagine that it will be difficult for you to get an invitation when the time comes. Harry, everyone is going to be anxious to meet you. They'll thank you and congratulate you and fuss over you."

"Not so different from being here, then," said Harry drily, but Sirius knew that Harry didn't care for the attention that came with being the Boy Who Lived, attention that could hardly be escaped in a room full of people who dueled at a high level.

"Griffith Ellis is the president," Sirius explained. "He's a self-important pompous arse, but he's all right."

"Sounds like Ernie MacMillan," said Harry. "He's in my year, in Hufflepuff."

Sirius made a note of the name. Harry rarely mentioned schoolmates who were not Hermione, Cedric, and the Weasleys. "Hestia Jones is the one I've known the longest. She knew your mum and dad, too- was in Dumbledore's Order with all of us. When I'm dueling, you're probably best off sitting with one of them. Though I don't imagine anyone will give you trouble. You'll just find some of the attention annoying."

"It'll be worth it," said Harry. "I've always wanted to see a real dueling club, ever since Lockhart said that we were going to have one in our second year, and Snape disarmed him in about two seconds and then he dropped his wand…" Harry shook his head in irritation. "Let's get the paint for the bench. The windows we can definitely do with magic, but not the bench."

* * *

If Petunia was aware that the work had been performed in a fraction of the time it ought to have taken, she said nothing. She only nodded her approval when Sirius said that he and Harry would not be home for tea.

* * *

The dueling chamber- a massive stone room accessed by descending three sets of steep stairs behind an unmarked door at the back of a dress shop- went silent as soon as Harry and Sirius entered.

"I see my godson needs no introduction," said Sirius as Griffith rushed forward to shake their hands. "Harry, this is Griffith Ellis."

"You didn't tell us that you'd be bringing a guest, Sirius!" Griffith blurted out too loudly. Sirius hoped that he would get to duel Griffith tonight. He'd use a tongue-tying charm on him at the first opportunity. "Ordinarily, of course, a guest needs to be cleared with the president beforehand, but seeing as Mr. Potter is the reason we're all free to duel as a hobby instead of to keep ourselves alive…"

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ellis," said Harry in such a way that only Sirius could hear the sarcasm. Or perhaps there was no sarcasm to be heard. Perhaps Harry was merely patient and polite.

"The pleasure is mine," said Griffith. "You will stay behind the barrier at all times, of course."

"Of course," said Harry.

"Then let us draw lots and begin!"

The usual excited chatter echoed off the walls once again as Griffith conjured a hat and a dozen slips of paper.

"Not well-attended tonight," said Griffith. "Too many on holiday. They'll regret it when they hear about our guest."

Sirius sensed that Harry was rolling his eyes from the other side of the protective barrier.

The slips of paper paired themselves off and pasted themselves to the barrier. Sirius and Nola Davison were going to fight the first duel of the night. He'd be able to defeat her in about ten seconds, but he still pulled Hestia aside and asked her to sit with Harry.

Hestia's pink cheeks grew rather pinker at the request and she agreed merrily.

That taken care of, Sirius bowed to Nola and awaited the signal to begin.

There was a short blast of a whistle.

Sirius disarmed Nola.

Once, he would have toyed with her- would have let his lesser opponent think that she had a chance, would have prolonged the battle.

He knew better now.

He had learned from what he'd seen in Remus' memory. It was all well and good for Griffith Ellis to say that dueling was a hobby and not a way to save one's life. Griffith Ellis didn't have the Boy Who Lived for a godson and Voldemort's best solider for a cousin.

He bowed once more to Nola and shook her hand. She looked rather put-out, but Sirius couldn't bring himself to care. He'd been humiliated in duels by both Remus and Tonks during the past year; if he could handle defeat gracefully, Nola certainly could.

He crossed the barrier and settled himself beside Harry to await his next turn. "What did you think?" he asked Harry.

"It was over too fast!" said Harry eagerly.

Nola glared at them from her seat nearby. Sirius refrained from saying something rude. "Griffith Ellis versus Roddy Reynolds. This one should take long enough for you to find it interesting."

"Roddy's just back from visiting his mum and dad in Lancashire," said Hestia. "I don't know whether that will make him give Griffith more trouble, or less."

"Less, I hope," said Sirius. "I want a go at Griffith tonight, and I don't want him worn down by Roddy."

"You won't be getting a go at Griffith in any case, Sirius," said Hestia. "I'm going to defeat him before he gets to you."

That was probably true, Sirius reflected. Hestia had been in fine fighting form lately.

"You'll likely have Jacob Garrison next," added Hestia. "The two of you fought to a draw last time you were matched with each other."

That was also true. Sirius had almost forgotten. That had been in March, and March had been a bad month, culminating as it had with Sirius reliving the night James had died in excruciating detail.

He missed Félicité. He wondered how she would fare in the Flagstone Dueling Club. Her interests seemed to lie in the theoretical more than the practical, but he hadn't ever asked.

Griffith and Roddy bowed to one another and the whistle blew.

As Hestia had predicted, the duel lasted the better part of an hour. Harry watched the duel avidly; Sirius watched Harry. He would never tire of seeing Harry so happy and interested. At last, Harry felt Sirius' gaze on him and turned to look at him, a question in his eyes.

"We're not allowed to bet," said Sirius, "but who do you think will win?"

Harry looked back at the men in the ring. "Griffith Ellis is more skilled," he said. "He's using more spells and he's connecting more often. Roddy Reynolds is using more power and more energy. The longer it goes, the better Ellis' chances get."

"So you're taking Ellis."

"No. I'm taking Reynolds. It means more to him and he only needs one of those hard spells to connect. It's reckless, but I think it's going to work."

"Someone's taught you about dueling," said Hestia to Harry. Harry glanced at her, evidently not having realized that she was listening. Indeed, the whole of the club had been listening, and the whole of the club was well aware that Harry's assessment had been a good one.

"Remus Lupin," Sirius told Harry. "He's the Defense professor at Hogwarts at the moment."

Hestia nodded in recognition and lowered her voice. "They say he broke the curse on the position somehow. Any idea what he did?"

"No," Sirius lied just as Roddy Reynolds threw a stupidly complex spell that knocked Ellis to the floor. He followed up with a body-bind, and the duel was over.

"Neither one of us gets a go at Ellis tonight," Hestia laughed to Sirius as they both clapped.

During the next several duels, Harry asked questions about the various duelists' habits and strategies, and Sirius answered as best as he could. He had been a member of the club for less than a year, and it seemed both shorter and longer. Time was strange that way.

Sirius' next duel was, as Hestia had predicted, against Jacob Garrison. Dislike rose within Sirius as they bowed to one another.

 _"That's a real duelist's wand,"_ Garrison had said when they'd last sparred.

Sirius missed the wand he should have had. Sirius missed the life he should have had. Those feelings didn't go away even when he got to sit with his godson for hours in a top secret dueling room.

He clutched the aspen wand too tightly and nearly lost his footing the instant the whistle sounded. Garrison had been ready; Sirius had not. Sirius stopped thinking about the wand and began to circle around Garrison.

As they had in March, Sirius and Garrison gave each other a good workout. The duel lasted fifteen minutes before Sirius was able to strike Garrison in the chest with, of all things, a tickling charm. (It had seemed to flow naturally after he'd dropped his shield, and Garrison certainly hadn't been expecting it.) He disarmed Garrison with his next breath.

Garrison congratulated Sirius sincerely when they had bowed to each other, and Sirius disliked him slightly less.

In his third and final duel of the night, Sirius fell to Hestia, who hardly gloated at all. "Tell your godfather to practice his off-hand casting on someone else," she told Harry casually, and Sirius couldn't object, because he'd had the same thoughts about Nola early in the night: she could practice elsewhere.

* * *

Sirius Apparated himself and Harry to the primary school near the Dursleys' house. The school always seemed to be in shadow, whereas he couldn't guarantee that no one would see them appearing out of nowhere on Privet Drive.

Harry fairly skipped along beside Sirius, talking of the duels they had seen and how he really rather liked Hestia even if she had beaten Sirius- she was better rested, obviously, and Harry was sure that Sirius would have beaten her if he had drawn her for his first duel of the night.

"There's no shame in losing to Hestia," Sirius said. "Of course, I'll disembowel her next time."

Harry laughed. "Is there a spell for that?"

"There is, but it's not one to use when you have something else that will work just as well. You saw me win with a tickling charm tonight."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You sound like Lupin."

"I've been called worse."

He felt rather than saw Harry freeze beside him. "There they are," said Harry. "Dudley and his gang. I knew he wasn't really getting invited round for tea at his friends' houses." And with that, Harry took off running toward the knot of boys. Sirius had no choice but to follow him.

_Yes, Minister Fudge, this time I really did murder a group of Muggles in public because Harry decided to pick a non-magical fight with five boys twice his size…_

"Leave him alone!" Harry shouted. Dudley and his friends turned to stare at Harry, dumbfounded. A smaller boy hung suspended between two of the older boys, the better for Dudley to punch him.

"Why would we do that?" asked Dudley.

"Because I said so," said Harry, and without another warning he hurled himself at one of the boys holding the child. There was a scuffle; Harry was quick, and he had the element of surprise. He punched every bit of the boy who could reach. Meanwhile, the child tumbled to the ground.

 _"Run home, Mark!"_ Harry bellowed.

The little boy, Mark, did as he was told.

Harry soon found himself in Mark's place: suspended between two bigger boys and waiting for the punishment of Dudley's fists. Sirius stood ready to intervene, but not just yet: he'd seen Harry talk himself out of a similar situation the night before, and if Harry could do it again… well, it was good practice for other things that were surely facing Harry in the future in the wizarding world.

"Do you really think that's a good idea, Big D?" Harry asked, staring his cousin full in the face. Harry betrayed no hint of fear.

It was Dudley who was, quite clearly, afraid. His eyes moved from Harry to Sirius to the other boys.

"Let him go," he ordered at last.

"Why?" asked one of the other boys. "Your mum'll be angry?"

"She never has been before," objected the smallest, rat-faced boy. "Didn't she send him to that school for criminals?"

"I heard that they sent him home with a professor to watch him." News certainly traveled quickly in this neighborhood. Sirius hadn't even spoken to anyone other than the Dursleys, in spite of his threats to do so. He had been out in the garden with Harry that morning, though, so he supposed that he'd been noticed.

"Right. There he is." Dudley pointed.

Sirius leaned against the nearest lamppost and gave the boys a wave. Dudley's friends scattered so quickly at Sirius' perceived authority that Sirius couldn't help but laugh. He grabbed Harry's arm with one hand and Dudley's with the other and directed them toward the Dursleys' home.

"Mark Evans?" Harry asked Dudley with disdain. "He's ten years old. How old was your opponent in that boxing title you keep banging on about? Seven? Eight?"

"He was sixteen for your information, and he was out cold for twenty minutes after I'd finished with him and he was twice as heavy as you. Mark Evans was asking for it. He cheeked me."

"Yeah? Did he say you look like a pig that's been taught to walk on its hind legs? Because that's not cheek, Dud, that's true…"

Dudley clenched his fists. "You've got a lot to say when you've got your pretend daddy and his magic stick following you around."

"And you need four mates to help you beat up on a ten-year-old."

Sirius, deciding that this argument was not going to go anywhere useful, chose that moment to interrupt. "Is Mark Evans related to the two of you?" he asked.

Harry and Dudley swiveled around to look at him. Clearly neither one of them had ever considered the possibility.

"I doubt it," said Harry. "It's a common name. Muggles aren't all related like wizards are, and you just told us last night that Mum and Aunt Petunia grew up in Cokeworth, not around here."

"I thought your aunt might have mentioned it."

"She never mentions anything like that." It was Dudley who answered, to Sirius' surprise. Perhaps Sirius' failure to intervene in the fight, magically or otherwise, had loosened Dudley's tongue. "Dad said it was wrong of you to bring up Cokeworth last night. He says Mum's past and her family are her own business."

"I would quite agree if your parents hadn't chosen to lock their orphaned nephew in a cupboard, assign him chores they would never assign their own son, and place him in the position of serving as your first punching bag. If your parents had decided to make Harry a part of your family, had treated him like a second son, I never would have intervened. I would have told Harry that I was glad that he was happy and that I would never interfere with his family."

"You did say that," put in Harry. "The first time we talked, you said that."

They had reached the Dursleys' home, and none of them said anything more until they were greeted by Vernon and Petunia.

Rather, Dudley was greeted by Vernon and Petunia. Harry was ignored. Vernon told Sirius that it was time to leave.

For the second time that night, Harry caught Dudley's eye. "Do you really think that's a good idea, Big D?" he asked again.

Either Dudley was braver with his parents beside him, or was more content to fall into old habits in his childhood home, because this time he was not unnerved by Harry. "Yeah, I think it's a great idea. He's ruining my fun."

"What did he do?" asked Petunia frantically. "You were at- your friend Gordon's house tonight, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Harry slyly. "How could I bother you while you were at Gordon's and I was at the Dueling Club with Sirius?"

"It was after we left," said Dudley. "We were just walking home- Malcolm and Piers and Dennis were there too- and Harry and that man chased them off for no reason."

"You've still got Mark Evans' blood on your shirt," said Harry.

Dudley looked down. "No I haven't." Harry smirked. "I haven't because I didn't even see Mark Evans tonight. How could I? He's ten years old. He should be home in bed."

"Quite right," said Vernon.

"You should call the Evans family and congratulate them on their superior child-rearing skills, then," suggested Sirius. "They aren't related to you, are they, Petunia?"

Petunia looked more than a little uncomfortable.

"We already told you no," snapped Dudley.

"Why would we have been talking about him if you hadn't been beating him up when I saw you?" asked Harry.

"Do not call my son a liar," Vernon told Harry.

"He won't," said Sirius quickly. "We'll leave you to sort it out. We wouldn't want the neighbors to talk if Dudley puts one of their children in hospital." And he gestured to Harry that they should scramble up the stairs as quickly as possible, once again leaving the Dursleys too distracted to follow through with evicting him.

* * *

"That felt really good," said Harry, sitting cross-legged on his bed. "I'm not afraid of Dudley at all anymore, but stopping him- just once-I know they'll be back at it with someone else tomorrow, but still. I didn't even use magic."

"Perhaps you and Dudley can practice boxing together, then," suggested Sirius drily. "It didn't happen tonight, but sometimes at the dueling club two people get disarmed at the same time and they end up punching or wrestling."

Harry laughed. "I don't think Dudley and I would make very good sparring partners."

"No, I shouldn't think you would. Harry…"

"Yeah?"

"You asked last night whether you were like your mum. Tonight, you were more like her than I ever would have thought possible. She would have intervened for that boy, just as you did."

"Really?"

"I have no doubt. She… she told your dad and me off a time or two for casting hexes where hexes didn't need casting."

Harry didn't ask for more of that story, which was just as well, because Sirius didn't feel like telling it. Remus had been very clear in his description of how Harry had reacted when he'd seen Snape's memories of their school years.

Sirius wondered if he and his friends had ever looked as pathetic as Dudley and his friends had looked. He wondered how he would have reacted, at the age of fifteen, if he'd seen himself through someone else's eyes.

"Harry, how do Muggles take the moving pictures they put on the telly?"

"Video cameras," said Harry promptly. "They're expensive, but Dudley got one for his birthday a few years ago. He's probably broken it by now. He threw a lot of stuff out the window when he first went on his diet last summer. Why?"

"Let's see if we can get one tomorrow."

He saw Lily in Harry, but he saw a touch of himself in Dudley, and he didn't care for that at all.

**_To be continued._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Harry and Dudley arguing over Harry's nightmare and Dudley's boxing title quoted from the first chapter of Order of the Phoenix


	53. The Interrogation

Remus barely had time to move his belongings (more numerous than they had been since his childhood) from his room in the castle to Sirius' house in Hogsmeade before his scheduled meeting with Dumbledore.

The castle was disconcerting when it had been emptied of students. He much preferred it during the school year, when every corridor burst with noise and excitement. He missed the students already- even the Slytherins with their constant subtle challenges to his authority.

The door to Dumbledore's office stood open in anticipation of his arrival. There was, after all, no reason to close it; for once, no one else was around to seek the headmaster's attention.

Hogwarts' Pensieve sat uninvitingly on the desk. Remus sat in a chair and glared at it. The Pensieve gave no sign of being impressed by his glare.

Dumbledore was seated at his desk writing a letter with a peacock-feather quill. Presently, the letter folded itself into a perfect envelope and flew out the window toward the owlery.

"If I were a vainer sort of man, Remus, I would take your abject misery more personally. Surely you have endured more unpleasant experiences than spending a week or two in my presence."

"I have," said Remus. "And now I'm going to relive some of them." It had been bad enough sharing his memories with Sirius. Sirius had been as much a part of him as his own shadow since they'd both been eleven years old. Dumbledore was his mentor, his benefactor, his savior, his teacher, his leader, the most powerful wizard in the world, and the man he'd mistrusted and betrayed even as he revered him.

"Would it help if I reminded you that I've lived a very long life and I'm unlikely to be shocked by anything you've done?"

"It would help," Remus admitted.

"In that case, Remus, permit me to inform you that I find you rather boring for a man who was bitten by a werewolf at the age of four, fought in two wars, and then used an apparently inexplicable method of time travel to attempt to save scores of lives, including my own."

"Thank you," said Remus.

"I think that we should begin at the beginning rather than the end. Do you disagree?"

It took Remus a moment to parse the question. He hated time travel. "I agree."

"When did history as you know it begin to change?"

"I awoke on the train to Hogwarts to take up my position here. Two years ago in September."

"You were unreasonably happy to see me. You told me that I had no idea how good it was to see me well."

"Yes." There was nothing more to say.

"I imagine that that is not how you greeted me the first time you took up your position here."

"No."

"When did your life and the lives of those around you begin to change in a more substantive manner?"

"Not until the end of the school year. I tried to apprehend Peter Pettigrew prior to the fiasco in the Shrieking Shack, but he evaded me."

"The fiasco, as you put it, went differently the first time you experienced it?"

A familiar blanket of shame threatened to suffocate Remus. "Among other things, I forgot to take my potion and could have infected any student in the school. I had, of course, also betrayed you by failing to tell you that I knew perfectly well how Sirius was getting into the castle- and the first time I didn't realize that he was innocent. Peter escaped and within a year he'd helped resurrect Voldemort. Sirius' name was never cleared and he nearly received the dementor's kiss that night."

"Sirius Black and I seem to disagree on a great deal lately," said Dumbledore quietly. "So much so that he would not permit me to keep possession of Salazar Slytherin's ring after I destroyed the Horcrux. But one thing about which we agree is you. Neither one of us finds your sins as unforgivable as you do."

Remus' chest tightened unpleasantly. "Shall I show you the memory beginning with the moment I noticed Peter and forgot to take my potion?"

"That sounds eminently sensible."

And Remus put his wand to his temple and relived the day he had failed to bring Peter to justice and come dangerously close to biting Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

* * *

They discussed the details of Peter's escape for the rest of the day. Remus was exhausted, but he found the energy to flee the castle as soon as Dumbledore dismissed him. He didn't think he had ever in his life been so eager to leave Hogwarts.

He returned to Sirius' house and realized anew how close it was to the Shrieking Shack. No wonder Sirius had flirted with alcoholism and madness living here. Remus gathered a quill and a square of parchment and escaped to the Three Broomsticks. The Three Broomsticks, too, was unusually quiet; the students and faculty had left the area for the summer, and most of the holiday travelers had not yet arrived. But Remus amused himself talking with an American wizard who had never before tasted proper butterbeer and answered Dora's most recent owl.

* * *

Dear Remus,

My ankle is completely healed and I can morph again. My hair has been mint green, dark purple, dark blue, olive green, black, and turquoise in the last hour. I don't usually prefer green, but I'm using this time that I'm suspended to broaden my horizons.

The suspension is driving me mad. Even desk duty would be an improvement over this. I would happily do paperwork right now, and I assure you that is not something I have ever said before.

My mum is also driving me mad. You'd think I'd had my leg amputated. She wants me to rest all day, but I've had as much rest as I can take.

How is your schedule now that the students have left Hogwarts? Can you come to me, or can I come to you? How is Harry?

Love,

Dora

* * *

Dear Dora,

Harry is much improved. I expect you know that Sirius has moved in with Harry's aunt and uncle, so Harry will be well-looked-after these next few weeks.

I will be working with Dumbledore on a special project for the next fortnight, so my days remain spoken for by Hogwarts but my evenings are free. I ought to Apparate to your flat this very moment, but it seems rather presumptuous and I'm inclined to agree with Andromeda. You should be resting.

I'm sure you are stunningly beautiful with mint green hair, dark purple hair, dark blue hair, olive green hair, black hair, and turquoise hair. Of course, I want you for your heart and your mind, not for your beauty.

And I hope that you want me for something other than my skill at writing love letters, which I promise to make every effort to improve.

Any evening that you are available, I am available. Madam Rosmerta's company is welcome, but no one compares to you.

That looks wrong now that I read it over. What I meant to say is that I love you. Please tell me when and where I can see you again.

Love,

Remus

* * *

The second day Remus spent with Dumbledore was shorter than the first. The invisible blanket of shame, though, was just as heavy. He was able to tell Dumbledore what had happened- how Barty Crouch, Junior, had imprisoned and impersonated Mad-Eye, how Harry had been forced to participate in the Triwizard Tournament, how Voldemort had bled Harry and risen again, how Cedric had died.

He was able to show Dumbledore almost nothing. He could present Dumbledore with only second-hand accounts from _Daily Prophet_ articles, letters from Sirius, and Sirius' own recitation of events when he'd come to rally the surviving members of the Order and offered Grimmauld Place as headquarters.

It was painful to see how thin and dirty Sirius was as he told Remus everything he knew about Barty and Mad-Eye, Wormtail and Voldemort.

It was painful to remember that he, Remus, hadn't offered any support to Harry, thinking that Harry wouldn't want to hear from his ragged old professor, thinking that it was Sirius' place.

He'd done better this time. He'd done better for Sirius and he'd done better for Harry.

That night, he went straight to the Three Broomsticks, not even pretending that he had any desire to go from the empty castle to the empty cottage. This time, he answered Sirius' most recent letter.

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

Harry and I have acquired a wonderful Muggle contraption known as a video camera, used to create Muggle cinema and television programs. It's a shame too much magic would prevent it from working, because it is a great deal of fun and has more uses than I can count. I had intended to use it to record Harry's cousin beating up the other children in the neighborhood, so as to throw the Dursley family into chaos (divide and conquer), but I may just use it to record Harry doing his homework so I can gaze in wonder at the memory of basking in his presence.

He is perfect, Moony. You should have seen the way he didn't blink when his uncle grabbed him and accused him of having poisoned Dudley. Didn't blink. Talked the man down. Handled the situation brilliantly- then broke up a fight the next day.

I've finally seen _Doctor Who_ so I know what you and Harry were talking about. The person at the shop said that I should watch _Star Trek_ as well. I liked the one where they won by Apparating the puffskeins onto the Klingon ship.

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

Everything has proceeded as expected at Hogwarts. I wish I could be with you and Harry. Rather, I wish you and Harry could be here with me, since the Dursleys aren't very good company. Though as you say, in Hogsmeade you wouldn't be able to use a video camera or watch Muggle telly programs.

I know that you plan to take Harry on holiday after he has his time with the Dursleys. Have you decided where?

Regards,

Mr. Moony

* * *

The third day Remus spent with Dumbledore was a bit easier. He could show Dumbledore one Order meeting after another. Arthur Weasley's near death wasn't pleasant to re-live, by any means, but Arthur had survived the first time and now there would be no need to guard the prophecy even if Voldemort somehow rose to full strength before they were properly prepared.

Remus even smiled at his memory of escorting Harry and his friends back to school after Christmas.

_"Come on, the quicker we get on the bus, the better," said Dora. She glanced purposefully around the square. Remus admired her skill. He worried about her when she was on Auror duty; that was only natural. But he also appreciated how very good she was at what she did._

Remus watched his other self throw out an arm.

_A violently purple triple-decker bus had appeared out of thin air in front of them, narrowly avoiding the nearest lamppost, which jumped backward out of its way,_

_A thin, pimply, jug-eared youth in a purple uniform leapt down onto the pavement and said "Welcome to the-"_

_"Yes, yes, we know, thank you," said Tonks swiftly. "On, on, get on-"_

_And she shoved Harry forward toward the steps, past the conductor, who goggled at Harry as he passed._

_"Ere- it's 'Arry-!"_

_"If you shout his name, I will curse you into oblivion," muttered Dora menacingly._

This time Remus even laughed. In the moment, he'd been too busy trying to keep the teenagers alive and inconspicuous to properly appreciate Dora.

In the memory, the group reached Hogwarts in a timely manner thanks to a well-placed bribe. The other passengers stared at Harry in the revolting way that too many people did.

_"You'll be safe once you're in the grounds," said Dora. "Have a good term, okay?"_

_"Look after yourselves," said Remus. He shook hands with all of them, saving Harry for last. Dora helpfully distracted the others so Remus and Harry could have a private word. "And listen… Harry, I know you don't like Snape, but he is a superb Occlumens and we all- Sirius included- want you to learn to protect yourself, so work hard, all right?"_

_"Yeah, all right," said Harry heavily. "See you, then…"_

The memory faded away as Remus and Dora left the school grounds, planning to walk to Hogsmeade and Apparate to London from there.

"I certainly understand who you chose Nymphadora Tonks to assist you in your classes last term," said Dumbledore. "You were already aware that you worked together splendidly. It appears that you knew each other quite well."

Remus had known that the day was going too easily. He had known that he and Dumbledore would have to have some sort of conversation about this, but he'd been hoping to put it off until the utterly humiliating moment when he showed Dumbledore _everything_ that had happened in the hospital wing after his death.

"We did," Remus agreed. "We do, again."

"Your romantic entanglements are not my concern," said Dumbledore quietly. "Not unless they affect our ability to rid the world of Lord Voldemort on a more permanent basis."

"They didn't the first time," said Remus.

"Then I am pleased that the Order brought you together."

Remus, who had spent two years carefully lying to Dumbledore by omission at every turn, suddenly wanted to share every thought he had ever had about how he and Dora might or might not end up married without the aphrodisiac of war. He restrained himself and said only, "I haven't told her. I intend to."

"I cannot stop you. And what I have seen, both with my own eyes and through your eyes, leaves me with little doubt as to her trustworthiness."

Remus had a sudden urge to quibble over the implications of the phrase _little doubt_ , and force Dumbledore to acknowledge that Dora was the most magnificent witch who had ever lived. Instead, he asked whether the staff was aware of his relationship with Dora. "I know that two fifth-year Gryffindor girls owe two fifth-year Hufflepuff girls a case of butterbeer," he added.

"Do try not to be too harsh with Miss Patil and Miss Brown now that you know they wagered against you," said Dumbledore with a perfectly straight face. "And as you and Filius insist on placing wagers on the Sorting Hat each year- wagers which, I might note, were not made entirely in good faith on your part-I don't imagine that you can be terribly angry that Professor Sinistra owes Professor Vector lunch at the Three Broomsticks."

"I never took anything from Filius," said Remus quickly.

"I know that, Remus," said Dumbledore. "I used to flatter myself that I knew everything that happened in this school. I still think I can claim to know _most_ of what happens."

Remus was willing to agree that that was almost certainly true.

* * *

As if by magic (and for all Remus knew, it _was_ magic), he left the castle to find Dora waiting for him. She threw herself enthusiastically into his arms and kissed him.

"Being suspended is so boring," she complained. "Let's do something interesting. Anything."

He drank in the sight of her. "I'm glad your injury had no lasting effects."

"I told you it didn't."

"I wanted to see for myself."

"And now you've seen and you can drop the subject. I've had enough fussing from my own mum. What I want from you is to treat me like a person."

"I can do that," he said, and he took her hand in his.

"Let's go to the Hog's Head and antagonize Aberforth Dumbledore," she suggested.

If that was what she really wanted, Remus was certainly not going to deny it to her. At the Hog's Head, they split a dusty bottle of wine and Dora teased Aberforth until Aberforth suggested that Remus ought to choose better company.

"There is none," said Remus, gazing at Dora with what he knew was a stupidly besotted expression on his face. He was worse than a fifth-year on a first date. In a way, that was only reasonable; he'd never been a fifth-year on a first date, and the first time he'd fallen in love with Dora he'd been too terrified to stare longingly across the table at her.

"Both of you, out!" Aberforth declared. "You're making my other patrons sick."

They obeyed, laughing, wine warming their veins. Remus automatically walked toward Sirius' cottage; they had reached the front door before he realized what he had done. "You wanted to do something interesting," he recalled. "I don't suppose anything interesting will happen inside the house."

Dora moved closer to him and whispered harshly in his ear. "I think you and I may have very, very different ideas of what 'interesting' means." Her hand grazed the inside of his thigh; all rational thought deserted him.

"Try to bring me around to your point of view," he suggested, and she did.

* * *

Remus awoke on the fourth day feeling as contented and relaxed as he had ever felt in his life. Dora was asleep beside him, naked and beautiful. He cast a spell to let sunlight flood the room and watched as she blinked awake. He knew from experience that she would not be pleased if he left without waking her to say goodbye.

"You don't really have to go to Hogwarts today, do you?" she asked.

"I'm afraid I do," he said. Today was the day that he would relive the battle at the Department of Mysteries. He would watch Dora fall to Bellatrix. He would watch Sirius die. And the appetizer for it all would be the memory of explaining to Harry why, precisely, he hadn't even attempted to control Sirius and James' worst impulses.

"Is it that bad?" she asked. His distress must have shown on his face.

"I never want to leave you," he said. He didn't. He hadn't wanted to leave her when she'd been pregnant. He'd believed it had been for the best, really, he had…

"We'll see each other again soon. Not tonight, I'm afraid, Tulip demands that I look at wedding dresses with her." She rolled her eyes. "I won't say I'd rather elope, but I'd be all right with something that's… a little less rigid, you know?"

He didn't know what to say. He couldn't very well apologize for the fact that their marriage in another reality had absolutely been an elopement.

_But Dora, we conceived the most wonderful unplanned baby on the wedding night, so you wouldn't trade it, right?_

But he had traded it.

 _Teddy_ .

Would he ever see Teddy again?

Would Dora ever forgive him?

Worse, would Dora even care if Teddy was lost forever?

Dora was busy getting dressed and didn't seem to notice that he hadn't said anything. "Before I forget," she continued, "my friend Penny is going to make Wolfsbane Potion for you this month."

"You- you told Penny?" he asked with horror. He'd met Penny. Penny was perfectly nice. Penny was also probably terrified of werewolves, and had been nowhere to be found during the war. Dora had never even mentioned her school friends during the long hours they'd spent together on Order business…

"Of course not!" She flashed her hair red, briefly, to show him that she was not pleased before lightening the color to its usual pink. "She knows I've been suspended, but she thinks this is something I'm doing on the side for work. It's not the first time I've come to her for an unusual potion rather than paying the apothecary."

"The cost of the ingredients is prohibitive, not to mention the time and talent that's required-"

"She's certified to provide Wolfsbane Potion to the Ministry and the apothecaries," said Dora dismissively. "And she's being compensated by me. Really by Sirius. He can afford it."

"Sirius told you to do this?" he asked, unable to keep a hint of anger out of his voice. The idea of Sirius and Dora discussing him behind his back as if he were a child unable to take care of himself was infuriating.

"He said that you didn't make arrangements for yourself last summer."

"He spent most of last year saying it would be more fun for him if I didn't take the potion."

"I assume he was joking."

Remus wasn't so certain. He didn't like that Dora was. He didn't like this friendship that had obviously grown between Dora and Sirius because…

Because it reminded him of James. He couldn't have counted the number of times that Sirius and James had obviously discussed him when he wasn't in the room and had made decisions that they thought (usually correctly) would be in his best interest.

That Dora and Sirius had done the same seemed like the tiniest betrayal of James.

That today he would tell Dumbledore about how Harry had watched his father's antics in Snape's Pensieve, too, seemed like a betrayal.

"Thank you, Dora," he said. "This is very thoughtful of you and Sirius."

"We're happy to do it," she said, all smiles again. "There's no reason for you to look so worried."

"I'm not looking forward to the conversation Dumbledore and I are about to have," said Remus honestly. "The subject of James Potter is going to come up, and discussing your friends' death is never a pleasant way to spend the day."

"I'm sure it's not," said Dora. "I hope it's a long time before I have to experience that."

"I hope so as well," Remus agreed. "Walk me to the school?"

* * *

They began, of course, with more Order meetings. More surveillance. More gossip about Dolores Umbridge. Third-hand accounts of the collapse of Harry's clandestine Defense Against the Dark Arts club, and Dumbledore's expulsion from Hogwarts.

"I must say, it's a shame you weren't there to see my exit in person," said Dumbledore. "It sounds as if I was quite magnificent."

"Of that, I have no doubt," said Remus, and they resumed reviewing memories of endless meetings and surveillance until Remus could no longer put off his memory of the day Harry had risked everything so as to ask Sirius why they'd been idiots (to put it mildly) at the age of fifteen.

Dumbledore watched the conversation in silence. He didn't set his quill to taking notes, as he sometimes did, and he didn't ask Remus to allow him to keep a copy of the memory.

In the swirling Pensieve, Remus' past self was questioning Harry.

_"Now that you mention it," Remus asked, "how did Snape react when he found you'd seen all this?"_

_"He told me he'd never teach me Occlumency again," said Harry indifferently, "like that's a big disappoint-"_

_"He WHAT?" shouted Sirius._

_"Are you serious, Harry?" asked Remus. "He's stopped giving you lessons?"_

_"Yeah," said Harry. "But it's okay, I don't care, it's a bit of a relief to tell you the-"_

_"I'm coming up there to have a word with Snape!" said Sirius, and he made to stand up, but Remus wrenched him down again._

_"If anyone's going to tell Snape, it will be me! But Harry, first of all, you're to go back to Snape and tell him that on no account is he to stop giving you lessons- when Dumbledore hears-"_

_"I can't tell him that, he'd kill me!" said Harry, outraged. "You didn't see him when we got out of the Pensieve-"_

_"Harry, there is nothing so important as you learning Occlumency!" said Remus sternly. "Do you understand me? Nothing!"_

_"Okay, okay," said Harry, discomposed and visibly annoyed. "I'll… I'll try and say something to him… but it won't be…"_

The memory ended in a swirl of mist.

Remus rose from his chair and stalked to the window, irritated beyond measure at the memory.

At the time, he had been appalled that Snape would stop teaching Harry to guard his mind from Voldemort (even allowing for the fact that he was certain that Harry had not been the diligent student that he always was when Remus was the teacher). The whole course of the war might have run differently, with far fewer casualties, if Harry had known how to protect himself.

He was even angrier now that he knew that Snape had been the one to reveal the prophecy to Voldemort. Snape had been the reason that Harry had been left an orphan with a scar that gave him a direct connection to Voldemort in the first place!

"How long of a break do you want, Remus?" asked Dumbledore. "An hour? Or shall we reconvene tomorrow?"

"I don't want a break!" Remus snapped rather more harshly than he would have preferred. He dropped back into his seat. "Let's get this over with."

"Remus-"

But Remus already had his wand at his temple, ready to summon the same memory he'd summoned for Sirius when he'd first attempted the process a year before.

_The room was in chaos. The stone floor was covered with blood and broken glass. A dozen duels were taking place simultaneously when Dumbledore, white-faced and furious, appeared in the entryway. The children and the members of the Order froze. The Death Eaters ran._

_All the members of the Order froze except one: Sirius._

_All the Death Eaters ran except one: Bellatrix._

_They were stars locked in each other's orbit, as they had been from the day Sirius was born and placed in his oldest cousin's arms._

_Bellatrix sent a jet of red light in Sirius' direction. Sirius ducked flamboyantly and laughed. "Come on, you can do better than that!" he shouted._

_The second jet of light hit him squarely in the chest. He fell backward toward the ragged veil hanging from the arch._

_All eyes were watching him as he vanished._

_Bellatrix screamed with triumph._

_Harry screamed with agony._

_Harry rushed toward the dais, calling Sirius' name, and was stopped from throwing his own life away only by Remus having the presence of mind to pin his arms to his sides._

_"There's nothing you can do, Harry-"_

_"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"_

_"It's too late, Harry-"_

_"We can still reach him-"_

_"There's nothing you can do, Harry. Nothing. He's gone."_

_"He hasn't gone! SIRIUS! SIRIUS!"_

_"He can't come back, Harry." Remus' face had crumbled and his voice was breaking, but he kept a firm grip on Harry as he writhed and fought. "He can't come back because he's d-"_

_"HE IS NOT DEAD! SIRIUS!"_

_Harry wrenched himself away from Remus, howling for Bellatrix's blood, and Remus' attention shifted to another wounded child as the scene dissolved._

He'd promptly been sick when he'd shown the memory to Sirius. He took a slow, deep breath to stop himself from repeating the performance for Dumbledore.

He spared a glance for Dumbledore out of the corner of his eye. Dumbledore didn't look much better than Remus imagined that he himself did. But when Dumbledore noticed that Remus was watching him, he managed an empty smile. "I don't suppose you'd like to compliment my skill in subduing the Death Eaters?"

"Not at the moment, Headmaster," said Remus wearily, but the weak attempt at a joke made the tightness in his chest ease just enough.

"I think I understand better, now, why you didn't feel that you could trust me," said Dumbledore.

"I was wrong not to trust you."

"You were wrong, but your decision made perfect sense in light of what you experienced. Your mistrust of Severus stems from far more than the matter of George Weasley's ear. Likewise, your mistrust of me stems from far more than my faith in Severus."

"No it doesn't," said Remus stupidly. Sirius had a laundry list of reasons to mistrust Dumbledore, but Remus would not have hesitated to tell Dumbledore everything the moment he'd arrived in the past had it not been for Severus Snape. "I mean, yes, I think that Severus' refusal to teach Harry- and his failure to tell the rest of us that he wasn't going to teach Harry- put Harry and everyone else in unnecessary danger. That made more sense to me once I believed that he was a Death Eater who'd been biding his time waiting for the right moment to murder you."

"And you were aware that my error in judgement- my belief that Severus could put his past experiences with you and your friends behind him-"

"Neither of us are proud of that," said Remus, echoing Sirius' words from his memory.

"I realize that, and I am aware that Severus was not innocent. And I am likewise aware that that was hardly the only mistake I made. I urged Sirius to stay hidden when he desperately needed to feel useful, and in the end he made decisions that cost him his life. I told Harry too little. If Harry had understood why he needed to use Occlumency…"

"It's impossible to find the right time to tell Harry the things he needs to know," Remus agreed. The anger drained from his body and he let himself sink more deeply into the chair. "There's so much. The prophecy, the blood protections, the Horcruxes, my memories from the future… we haven't told him that he's a Horcrux. We didn't make a conscious decision not to tell him. The conversation simply went in another, equally complicated, direction, and now it's one more conversation that we'll have to have. Another horrible thing to tell him when he's dealt with so much. And while he's wise beyond his years, he also still so very young. Just the other day, Sirius threatened to spit in my Wolfsbane Potion because I told Harry that Sirius died in my memory and Harry had a nightmare about it."

"Four years ago," said Dumbledore, not entirely seeming to hear Remus, "Harry arrived at Hogwarts. He rose magnificently to the challenges that faced him. At the end of the year, he lay in the hospital wing and asked me why Voldemort tried to kill him when he was a baby. Ought I have told him then? I did not. I told myself that it was too much at such a young age."

"I think I would have decided the same," agreed Remus. He thought of how small the first years were. He thought of little Simona MacAlastair, who hadn't been able to stand the thought of a year away from her family.

"Then three years ago," Dumbledore continued, "Harry arrived for his second year. He triumphed again in a way that no one has an right to expect from a fully grown wizard, let alone a child. And yet, I allowed him to leave my presence, bloodstained, exhausted but exhilarated, without telling him everything. He was still so young- twelve is hardly better than eleven- and I could not find it in me to spoil that night of triumph. I cared about him too much. I cared more for his peace of mind than my plan. I-"

"I'm here to tell you that his peace of mind and the plan need not be mutually exclusive," said Remus. "You'll see in a few days, when we get to my memories of the final battle- my memories of my own death-"

"Thank you, Remus," said Dumbledore, and Remus would not have thought Dumbledore capable of such vulnerable sincerity. For the first time, it seemed that Dumbledore- his protector, his teacher, his patron, his leader, his headmaster- was approaching him almost as an equal.

"Until tomorrow, then?" he asked, sensing that Dumbledore had been even more strained by the day's memories than Remus himself.

"Until tomorrow."

* * *

Once again, Remus tucked himself into the friendly crowd at the Three Broomsticks with a letter from Sirius. (Sirius who was alive.)

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

I have told Harry several times to think about where he wants to go next month, and he doesn't seem willing (able?) to answer. I don't get the impression that he's ever traveled before, but when I tell him about different places he doesn't seem terribly interested. I got a rather cheeky suggestion that we should just go to Disney World.

Disney World, if you do not know, seems to be something like Blackpool Pleasure Beach, except more so. I do treasure that memory of James' parents taking the four of us to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, so perhaps I should take Harry to Disney World and let him deal with the consequences of having a smart mouth. Do you think you'll be able to join us, or will your project with Dumbledore take the balance of the summer?

The video camera has been successful. I played the recording of Harry's cousin attacking a neighbor for the entire Dursley family. Dudley's punishment has left Vernon and Petunia too distracted to try to get rid of me for another day or so. I'm a bit surprised that Petunia chose to punish him, even though I was counting on her constant fear of what others are saying to win the day.

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Dear Mr. Padfoot,

Thank you for the potions. I saw Dora yesterday and she informed me of the plans that the two of you made. Dora is looking well, and her ankle is as strong as ever.

I'd love to join you and Harry no matter where you go. I think it would be best if you had an extra wand, even if you decide to go to a Muggle destination. Harry was raised by Muggles; perhaps it's no surprise if he would like to visit a Muggle place rather than a wizarding one where everyone feels free to goggle at his scar.

Today I showed Dumbledore the first memory I showed you last year. I didn't vomit this time, but I don't mind admitting it was a near thing. I expect the project to last only two or three more days.

Regards,

Mr. Moony

_**To be continued** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer : Several modified quotes from Order of the Phoenix in this chapter, specifically Remus and Tonks on the bus, Harry's declaration that he is no longer learning Occlumency, the battle at the Department of Mysteries, and Dumbledore's musings on the right time to tell Harry the truth.


	54. The Interrogation 2

The fifth day began more with conversation than with memories. Once again, Remus had very little first-hand knowledge about the war. This time, though, he could not entirely blame himself. He had been out of touch with the wizarding world because Dumbledore had asked him to live amongst the werewolves. He supposed that he could have said no; if it had happened again, he would say no. He hoped that he had learned better than to exchange time spent with the people he loved for a fool's errand.

"I made no progress whatsoever," he told Dumbledore. "They were, if anything, less receptive to the idea than they were in the first war. They believed that anything Voldemort offered them would be an improvement over the status quo, and I couldn't blame them. Of course, they had no interest in listening to me. I bore unmistakeable signs of having lived amongst wizards. I don't know whether they were envious or saw me as a traitor."

"I don't suppose the two are mutually exclusive."

"I don't suppose they are."

"You may as well show me, Remus. Not everything, but we've come this far."

Remus nodded and drew a strand of memory from his mind.

* * *

Elara was tiny. Even if she had been well-fed and healthy (he doubted that she had ever been well-fed and healthy), she would have been nearly as short as a goblin, nearly as thin as a skeleton.

Remus didn't know how old she was. The constant deprivation- lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of medical care- left the werewolves in the pack looking aged beyond their years. She looked a good ten years older than he was; she was probably a good ten years younger.

Elara knew how to use her small stature to her advantage. She brought in as much food as any of the rest of them, every bit of it stolen from the lowest shelves of a shop or a cart. It worked until it didn't. The shopkeeper dealt her a punishing blow across her face; she spat a bloody tooth on the floor and crawled into the street.

Remus picked her up over her protests.

"Geroff." He could tell that she meant it to sound threatening, but instead it sounded feeble.

"If the Muggle police come for you, it'll be the Ministry next," Remus reminded her. It wasn't uncommon for a werewolf to spend the full moon in a Muggle jail. Each time it happened, the Ministry came, armed with memory charms, and the werewolf was subjected to poking and prodding and all manner of unpleasantness.

"You've got friends in the Ministry," she said.

"I don't." It was a lie, of course, and one that fell easily from his tongue.

"They sent you here. They sent you here to spy on us."

"I do not work for the Ministry," he told her, and that at least was true. He strode with her in his arms into the forest grove where the pack had been living for some time. "The Ministry would never hire someone like me. You know what I am."

"We all know what you are," injected Bader, and Remus redoubled his caution. Bader was one of the leaders of the pack, and Bader never hid his disdain for Remus. "A fool who thinks that if he's gentle enough, pleasant enough, well-spoken enough, the wizards will accept you and treat you as one of your own."

"I've lived long enough to understand that that isn't true. I've never been allowed to find paid work. People I thought were my friends recoil from me when they realize-"

Bader waved him off, looking bored. Remus set Elara down beside a small fire. He didn't like the way it popped and crackled; without proper spells, it might burn Elara, and it wasn't warm enough to do much good, either. But Remus knew better than to draw his wand for any purpose in front of Bader. (Bader was the only squib werewolf Remus had ever met, and Bader's distaste for magic rivaled Argus Filch's distaste for muddy castle floors.)

"They don't care about any of us," said Elara. "You-Know-Who can't be any worse. Fenrir Greyback will go to bed tonight with food in his stomach. Can you say the same for any of us?"

"Don't bother with him," said Bader.

At first Remus thought that Elara was simply obeying. Then he thought that she had fallen asleep.

It was hours before he realized that she had died. He never knew whether it had been sickness, starvation, the blow to the head, or something else. The pack buried her and moved on.

* * *

"They never hurt me, not really," Remus told Dumbledore. "But neither did they listen to me. It's virtually impossible to convince someone to take sides with a system that shows no concern for his most basic needs."

"Indeed," said Dumbledore. "It's not a surprise."

"Few opportunities for education, even fewer for paid work. Little food, less shelter."

"I quite agree, Remus. We should do better."

As Dumbledore had wanted to see the memory even though it was not strictly germane to their project, Remus decided that it was as good an opportunity as any to ask a question that had periodically floated across his mind over the years.

"Why me?"

"Can you be more specific?" asked Dumbledore with a small smile.

"Why did you choose to admit me to Hogwarts? Why not Elara? She was bitten as a child, just as I was."

"Because Elara Warner could never have done what you did. I want Hogwarts to offer an education to any willing child, but you do not need me to tell you that the prejudice is so great that it must be done in secret, at least at first. The Ministry would never stand for it. The other parents would never stand for it. I was delighted when I learned about you, because you were the perfect example. You remain the perfect example, Remus."

Remus wasn't certain that he wanted to be the perfect example. It made him feel rather like something dangerous and smelly growing in Professor Sprout's greenhouse.

"Even when Fenrir Greyback is at his worst, only a small number of human beings are bitten by werewolves each year," Dumbledore began with gentle authority. Remus felt rather like he was back in school, and he didn't mind at all. "Most werewolves restrain themselves or change in areas where there is a shortage of potential victims. Most wizards are wise enough to stay indoors on the night of a full moon. Most of the victims of werewolf attacks are, in fact, Muggles- simply because there are many more Muggles than wizards, and because Muggles often do not believe that werewolves exists and do not take proper precautions."

"I know that."

"I know you know that. You also know that Muggles cannot attend Hogwarts. Nor squibs, in the case of your acquaintance Mr. Bader. The majority of werewolves are not eligible to attend Hogwarts in the first place. A significant percentage of werewolves who do have magic are adults. That leaves only magical children bitten in Great Britain. Over half of those children die from their injuries or because their parents choose to kill them."

Remus was taken aback by the blunt statement. He knew the truth of the words; he had thought them in his own mind many times. But on the rare occasion that he gave voice to the sentiment, he used the dreadful euphemism: _put them out of their misery._

"Next," Dumbledore continued, "we have magical children who survive the bite and every transformation until they reach the age of eleven. Many of them have been sent to live with werewolf packs and have no academic grounding, no desire to come to school, and no ability to hide their condition. Others have parents who refuse to let them attend; you may recall that your parents took some convincing."

"Mine wasn't the first home you burst into with a Hogwarts letter and a plan to plant a Whomping Willow on the grounds?" asked Remus. He wasn't certain which answer he preferred.

"In fact, it was. I had made prior inquiries, but I had accepted no for an answer. You, however, were the perfect candidate and I had no intention of letting you slip through my fingers. A child who had been raised and loved and taught by his parents, much like any other little boy. A child who was clever enough to succeed in his classes even if he lost a week out of the month to illness. A child responsible beyond his years. A child who understood how to hide his very visible illness. How many children like that do you suppose there are, Remus? I've never seen your equal."

Remus stared stupidly at Dumbledore.

"It's true," said Dumbledore, still more kindly than Remus thought was strictly necessary. "I have appreciated having you here as a professor these past few years, and I hope that you are able to stay with us for many more. I fear, however, that you will most likely be publicly revealed as a werewolf and asked to resign- by the Ministry and the Board of Governors, of course, not by me. My hope is that by the time that happens, you will have opened enough young minds to the idea that a werewolf need not be a dirty, dangerous, frightening beast. Much like Hagrid has, without even trying, changed minds about what it means to be half-giant."

"Harry said something similar last Christmas," said Remus. "I told him that my true nature would be revealed eventually, and that when that happens I will have to leave. He said that if I stayed in the position for twenty years, no one would want to sack me."

"Harry is a wise young man," said Dumbledore. "Perhaps he will be headmaster of this school one day."

"He'd make a fine professor," Remus agreed. "Though I believe he prefers the Auror Department as a career path, with occasional consideration given to professional Quidditch."

"And to make certain that those options remain open to him, I suppose we should resume our task." Dumbledore nodded at the Pensieve, and Remus filled it with memories of Christmas, soon after he had left the werewolf camp.

He didn't need a Pensieve to remind him of this conversation. He had replayed it over and over in his head since he'd found himself five years in the past.

_"Do you honestly like Snape?" Harry asked._

_"I neither like nor dislike Severus," he said, as Harry didn't even bother to try to hide his skepticism. "No, Harry, I am speaking the truth. We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps, after all that happened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usually do at the full moon."_

_He'd meant it at the time. He'd insisted that Harry's loathing of Severus Snape was nothing more than James' blood and Sirius' tutelage. He'd repeated, and not for the first time, that Dumbledore trusted Snape and that to trust Snape was to trust Dumbledore._

"Perhaps you will do me the honor of coming around to that point of view again, Remus," said Dumbledore wryly as Remus ran through his memories of several comparatively dull Order meetings and, finally, the battle that had led to Dumbledore's death.

He showed Dumbledore everything this time. Dora's confession of love. The funeral. The burial.

He waited for Dumbledore to make a witty remark about how he would have preferred a shorter eulogy and a more dramatic interment, but Dumbledore said nothing.

The self-absorbed part of Remus wondered if Dumbledore was newly appalled at the way an old, broken man had somehow succumbed to the advances of a beautiful young woman.

"Shall I leave for the day?" asked Remus.

Dumbledore nodded his assent. "Return tomorrow." As Remus rose to leave, Dumbledore spoke again. "And Remus?"

"Yes, Headmaster?"

"I told you the other day that your romantic entanglements are not my concern."

Remus knew that Dumbledore was a master of Legilimency (as he was of most things), but he hadn't even felt Dumbledore probe his mind. He said as much.

"I didn't need to probe, Remus, you were projecting your concerns, which is not at all like you. It normally takes quite an effort to look into your mind. A natural defense you developed in your childhood, I should think. Now, say hello to Madam Rosmerta for me."

Remus didn't bother questioning how Dumbledore knew that he usually spent his evenings at the Three Broomsticks. He simply made his way back to Hogsmeade.

* * *

Remus had been planning to write to his father- all the talk about his unusual childhood had reminded him that he ought to- but before he could put quill to parchment, he was startled by the sound of the chair across from him scraping away from the table.

"May I join you, Remus?" asked Professor McGonagall.

He set aside the letter, delighted at the prospect of company.

"There is something that you must know," she told him as soon as pleasantries had been exchanged and ordering had been dispensed with. "You should know that while Albus Dumbledore purports to take no interest in the romantic entanglements of his staff, he defines the concept of _taking no interest_ in a unique manner."

Remus nearly dropped the glass of water he'd been holding; he recovered himself and set it gently on the table. "He objects to-"

"Oh, no. Never. He doesn't object to love in any form. To the contrary, he objects to unnecessary heartbreak."

Remus, well aware of the rumors that had circulated about Dumbledore and Grindelwald after Dumbledore's death, could not bring himself to be surprised. "He spoke to you about Dora and me?"

"No one needed to speak to me about the two of you."

Remus rolled his eyes. "I understand that Aurora owes Septima lunch. I hope you were able to collect your winnings as well."

"I couldn't bring myself to take part in the game this time. I must admit… Well, there is a reason that Albus asked me to speak to you. What do you know of my own romantic history?"

Remus' mind began to swirl more swiftly than any Pensieve ever could have. The part of him that was a mature adult was honored that Minerva was willing to share something so intensely personal with him. The part of him that was a less-conscientious-than-he-ought-to-be teenager was giddily looking forward to the next time he spoke to Sirius. He told the teenage part of himself to be quiet and learn to respect other peoples' privacy.

"I'm afraid I don't," he said. "The only story I recall hearing was that you insisted upon keeping your Muggle father's name even though you once married a pureblood wizard. Though there never is any telling what is true and what is not when it comes to stories about identity and politics."

"As it happens," she said, just slightly imperiously, "that story is entirely true. I had been Professor McGonagall to generations of students by the time I married, and I adored my father. I saw no need to change my name, and my husband would never have asked it of me. He fell in love with Minerva McGonagall; he expressed no desire for me to become Minerva Urquart."

She looked sad as she said the name, and Remus wondered what had become of Mr. Urquart.

"I am, as well you know, the product of a Muggle-magical marriage. My mother concealed her nature from my father until they had been married for several years and shared a child." Remus nodded. That was often the case. His own parents' marriage had been unusual in that his father had revealed everything to his mother long before the wedding; indeed, his mother had found it quite amusing to celebrate her marriage with a boggart-topped cake. It was their example that left Remus with no doubt that Dora had to know all of his secrets sooner rather than later.

"When I began to show signs of magic almost immediately, my mother knew that she could not continue to conceal the truth." She smiled wryly at Remus. "Apparently I had a tendency to cause my father's bagpipes to play themselves."

He laughed. His own early signs of magic had been much more mundane.

"My father loved my mother, but above all else he prided himself on being honest and forthright. It was terribly painful for him to be drawn into the secrecy that comes with a magical family living amongst Muggles. It was equally as difficult for my mother to conceal so much of her own identity. She sobbed uncontrollably when my Hogwarts letter arrived, and I knew that it was more jealousy than pride that made her cry."

"I'm sorry," said Remus softly.

She waved her hand impatiently. "It was many years ago. I loved school, of course, and when I graduated I was offered a position at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I went home to spend one last summer with my family, but instead I spent my time with a Muggle boy named Dougal McGregor. Before I knew what had happened, he was on his knees proposing, and I was accepting. But when I went home to tell my parents, I found that I couldn't. I couldn't tell them that I was going to enter the same sort of marriage that had made them both so miserable no matter how much they loved each other. I couldn't stand to lock away my wand. And so I broke off the engagement and went to London."

"Did you ever consider telling him?" asked Remus.

"Of course I considered it. And perhaps if I'd grown up witnessing your parents' style of mixed marriage rather than my parents' style of mixed marriage, I would have done it. But Dougal was looking forward to inheriting his father's farm; he didn't want to move to London. I was looking forward to taking up my position with the Ministry; I didn't want to be a farmer's wife. I didn't see any way to make those two lives compatible. And so I told Dougal I had changed my mind, and he married the young woman from the adjoining farm almost immediately."

Remus wanted to say, again, that he was sorry, but he knew that Minerva would not appreciate that. Instead, he remained quiet and listened as she continued.

"Unfortunately, I despised the life I'd chosen over Dougal." She looked around carefully to make certain that no one was listening to them; no one was. "I hated the Ministry and its bias against anyone who wasn't a pureblood. I missed Scotland terribly. The only thing that made my years with the Ministry tolerable was my boss. His name was Elphinstone Urquart. When the time came for me to be promoted, I turned the promotion down and asked whether there were any positions available at Hogwarts."

Remus smiled. He couldn't imagine what it must be like to be so extraordinary that one could merely ask for a teaching position at Hogwarts and have it granted.

"I'd been teaching for several years when Elphinstone came to Scotland on holiday. He proposed to me right down the street in Madam Puddifoot's teashop. I turned him down."

"Because proposing in Madam Puddifoot's is too much of a cliche?" Remus asked innocently. Each spring, a handful of seventh-years celebrated their new engagements at Madam Puddifoot's, where they had often passed their first dates a year or two before. James had proposed to Lily there.

"Because I was in love with Dougal. My friendship with Elphinstone survived, and over the years he proposed to me every so often. This was the height of the war against Voldemort, you understand, around the time I was teaching you. But Voldemort was defeated and Dougal died within the span of two months. I'm sorry to say that I don't know which of those things was more freeing to me. Elphinstone was twenty-five years older than I was, an old man, retired, and this time when he asked me to marry him I said yes. We bought a cottage in Hogsmeade, and the next three years were the very happiest of my life. It is, if you were wondering, quite permissible to teach at Hogwarts while living in Hogsmeade."

Remus didn't dare to dream of such a thing.

"I told you that perhaps if I'd seen your parents' marriage as an example, I would have been less afraid to marry a Muggle. I want you to know that it is very possible for a woman to marry a man significantly older than she is and to be happy in that marriage, without age ever factoring in at all."

She removed an old-fashioned watch from her pocket and snapped it open so that Remus could see the photograph inside. It was a bit surreal to see Minerva McGonagall- who he had rarely glimpsed in any role but professor-dressed as a bride, beaming happily at the man who must have been Elphinstone Urquart.

"You both look very happy," he said, leaning back as Madam Rosmerta set plates of food in front of them. They waited for Rosmerta to retreat by resuming their conversation. "But I will point out that you did not marry him when you were fresh out of school and a few years into your first job at the Ministry. That's where Dora is now. She is- she is very young to decide that she wants to spend the rest of her life with a man who is older and ill and likely to drag her toward poverty."

"I would think less of you if you didn't consider those things. But I will note that I taught Nymphadora Tonks. She is not the sort of young person who needs a few more years to decide what she wants. She is extraordinarily determined and knows her own mind."

"That's certainly the truth." He looked again at the photograph before returning the pocket watch to its owner. "Thank you for telling me your story." It had been a far more pleasant lecture on the importance of ignoring his valid concerns about marriage to Dora than one he had received in the hospital wing in the future-past.

"Thank you for being a polite audience. Now tell me, have you had a chance to review the OWL and NEWT scores our students received this year?"

The rest of the meal passed in collegial conversation. It was odd, and yet it was not.

* * *

On the sixth day, Remus arrived at Dumbledore's office to find Dumbledore energetic and alert, sorting through vials of memory and rolls of parchment with such intense focus that Remus did not wish to disturb him. Instead, he stood for a moment in the doorway and watched Dumbledore work.

"Are you going to come in, Remus?" asked Dumbledore without looking in his direction.

"Yes, Headmaster. I was merely pleased to see how well you recovered from your death."

"And I am likewise pleased to know that you had a particularly interesting dining companion last night."

"Thank you for that," said Remus. "It will make some of what I will share with you today slightly less humiliating, although I still make no excuses for my behavior."

"We are not here to judge your behavior," Dumbledore reminded him. "We are here to make certain that we can put a stop to Lord Voldemort before he rises to power again."

That having been said, Remus began to pore over his memories. Mad-Eye killed; George maimed for life. Harry on the run with his friends. Registration of Muggle borns; the death of Ted Tonks. Potterwatch with Lee Jordan. (Remus and Dumbledore agreed that it was a shame that Potterwatch would not exist in a less dark world.) The final battle, the horrible, awful, final battle. Corpses littering the school grounds.

* * *

_He assigned himself the most dangerous task- leading a group of fighters onto the grounds- to little argument. They all agreed that the professors should stay in the school and defend the towers. It was Remus, Kingsley, and Arthur who divided up the twenty most knowledgeable, level-headed volunteers and walked straight into Voldemort's attack._

_The battle began suddenly, as battles so often did. There was always a long moment of boredom before the instant of sheer terror._

_He flung a masked Death Eater away from one of the others with a simple Knockback Jinx, and that was when Antonin Dolohov stepped into his line of sight._

_He wasn't sure how he knew Dolohov instantly. It wasn't as if they were old chums, or even old enemies who had spent much time together._

_He took a defensive stance. Often, otherwise brilliant duelers could be made to defeat themselves by an opponent who wasn't too proud to start with a retreat. Remus was all too happy to go backward to go forward._

_Sweat soaked Remus' clothes and dripped from his face. His breathing quickened._

_But he advanced._

_The battle raged around them, but for Remus and Dolohov there was nothing but their duel. Remus took hits and avoided hits and stayed on his feet. He hit Dolohov and missed Dolohov and watched Doholohov stay on his feet._

_He saw the curse he wouldn't be able to block long before it hit him in the chest._

_Like Sirius, he laughed. He laughed at the irony of it all. He should have died as a small boy when Fenrir Greyback had climbed in his window. He should have died when the transformations ripped him limb from limb. He should have died when the some of the cures his parents sought turned out to be worse than the transformations themselves. He should have died when he and his friends had betrayed Dumbledore's trust. He should have died in the first war against Voldemort. He should have died of grief and poverty when Voldemort had fallen, leaving Harry an orphan and Remus friendless. He should have died so many times._

_Instead he died now, with the end in sight, with a beautiful future awaiting him._

* * *

The memory ended with a painful flash that led both Remus and Dumbledore to step backwards instinctively.

"I've never seen the Pensieve behave this way. Most intriguing," said Dumbledore, prodding at the mist with his wand. "This may be the first time anyone had ever used a Pensieve to observe his own death. Unless you shared these memories with Sirius?"

"I didn't," said Remus. He and Sirius had used the Pensieve only to look at memories that were specifically relevant to finding Horcruxes. Sirius had decided, after internal deliberation to which Remus was not privy, not to watch Remus' death.

He put his wand to his head and focused on the next memory that he wished to retrieve.

* * *

_He blinked through a flash of light to find himself in his childhood bedroom._

_"Why am I here?" he asked aloud._

_"Because this was a place of great transition for you," came his mother's clear voice. He hadn't seen or heard her for twenty years, but when she sat beside him on the bed it was if they had never been apart. "And now it is time for another transition."_

* * *

He opened his eyes to find himself on the floor of Dumbledore's office, struggling to catch his breath. Dumbledore knelt at his side.

"Whatever you just did," said Dumbledore, "I suggest that you do not do it again."

Remus opened his mouth to say that he'd done the exact same thing he'd done when he'd shared his other memories, but the words he spoke were nonsensical. They sounded like no language he had ever known.

His heart began to pound; his breath quickened.

"Calming draught," Dumbledore said, and Remus shook his head, hoping to make himself understood. Calming draught contained wolfsbane, and it was far too close to the full moon for him to take anything that might offset the effectiveness of Wolfsbane Potion. "Of course not, wolfsbane," Dumbledore said aloud. "Forgive me, Remus. Let us try…"

Whatever spell it was that Dumbledore tried, Remus did not know, but he knew that it worked. His heart slowed; when he tried to speak, his words made sense again.

"Will you allow me to try to look into your mind without the aid of the Pensieve?" asked Dumbledore.

Remus nodded his consent and tried to relax into the Legilimancy as he felt Dumbledore sifting through his memories.

There was Harry shouting at him to go home to his family; there was Harry sparring with Cedric. There was Sirius, hugging him outside the cottage in Yorkshire; there was Sirius, refusing to leave his dark room in Grimmauld Place. There was Dora, beaming at him as they walked hand-in-hand to the Hog's Head; there was Dora, cradling Teddy in her arms. He showed the photograph of Teddy to Fleur. He fought Dolohov.

Then nothing.

He was six years old, in bed after a full moon, and his mother's hand was on his forehead. He was thirteen years old, and he and Peter were in his mother's kitchen watching as she cooked. He was nineteen years old and sitting at his mother's side as she died. He stood beside his mother's coffin; Lily, visibly pregnant, stood beside him.

Then nothing.

He tried to push forward the memory of his mother, who was not his mother, telling him that it was time to move on. The memory was elusive. He could think of it, but he couldn't describe it.

He clawed at the memory of Lily and James and Sirius comforting Harry as he died.

_"You'll stay with me?"_

_"Until the very end."_

_"They won't be able to see you?"_

_"We're a part of you."_

The words were there, but the images were not.

His chest tightened, and as soon as it did Dumbledore stopped attacking his mind. (When had it become an attack? He had given his consent.)

"Enough for today, I think," said Dumbledore, and Remus protested, begging for one more go the way Harry had done during his Patronus lessons. Dumbledore held firm, and that night Remus went straight back to the cottage and fell asleep, not caring about the view of the Shrieking Shack or how quiet it was.

* * *

On the seventh day, and the eighth, and the ninth, Remus and Dumbledore talked about what he had done during the past two years. Peter Pettigrew and Barty Crouch were in Azkaban. Igor Karkaroff's theory that Remus had been targeting former Death Eaters had not been entirely incorrect.

He told Dumbledore what he remembered of the aftermath of his own death, and Harry's. But try as he might, he could not show him.

Dumbledore insisted that he believed Remus; Remus had shown him too much for him to think otherwise. But Remus remembered how Dumbledore had looked at the very first memory Remus had shown him- the maiming of George Weasley- and had seen something Remus had never seen. What might Dumbledore have seen in Remus' other memories?

* * *

When the full moon came, he locked himself in the Shrieking Shack just in case Penny Haywood's potioneering was not as brilliant as Dora seemed to believe. The Wolfsbane Potion worked perfectly, as it happened. The transformation, though, was so painful that he was barely able to drag himself back to the cottage.

The cottage seemed to spin around him, twisting itself into the room he had seen after dying at Dolohov's hand.

He scraped up the energy required to owl Dora and Sirius that he was fine.

He slept for the next two days. In his dreams, he saw his son and his mother. Sometimes, too, he saw James and Lily. The veil between the living and the dead felt terribly thin, and he did not know whether he liked it or not.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Minerva McGonagall's backstory is from Pottermore, or whatever JK Rowling is calling her website at the moment. A few flashback quotes from Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows, set off as memories.


	55. Tonks Interlude G

She learned that she was going to be formally disciplined from the _Daily Prophet_ , not from Robards or Scrimgeour, and she was furious about it.

_Auror to Be Disciplined in Karkaroff Matter_

_The Auror Office has concluded its inquiry into the death of Igor Karkaroff, the Daily Prophet has learned. Nymphadora Tonks, the Auror who exerted deadly force in a confrontation with Karkaroff last month, had previously been suspended pending the resolution of the investigation._

_Tonks will be issued a formal letter of reprimand and will be placed on "desk duty" for three months, sources say._

_"[Head of Aurors] Rufus Scrimgeour didn't want her to be disciplined at all," one source tells the Prophet. "It wasn't up to him because he was right there when it happened, but he fought for her. He would have won if the dead man had been anyone else."_

_Igor Karkaroff was the Headmaster of Durmstrang Institute. Famously, he was arrested after the fall of You-Know-Who and gave evidence leading to the convictions of multiple Death Eaters. Karkaroff's death has prompted calls for an inquiry from Aca Miomir, the Minister of Magic in his native Serbia. Likewise, Katarina Else, the Danish sub-Minister for International Cooperation, stated last month, "Karkaroff's death appears to have taken place in Danish waters, outside the jurisdiction of the British Auror Office. As such, it must be dealt with transparently and publicly as all nations work together to secure the safety and secrecy of the wizarding world."_

_"Cornelius Fudge is terrified by the prospect of an international incident," our source tells us. "He saw the events of the past year- the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament- as a great test of his leadership. He thought that he had survived unscathed, and then Karkaroff turned up dead."_

_Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic Dolores Umbridge issued the following statement last week:_

_"We agree that it is imperative that the circumstances leading up to Mr. Karkaroff's death and the events that followed are examined in full and in public. The Minister of Magic is second to none in his desire to see all wizards and witches united against those who would threaten us, and mourns Mr. Karkaroff along with his loved ones."_

She threw the newspaper down and pulled on her trainers, intending to go for a run to burn off some of her anger.

She had knocked over two chairs, a table, and a vase (mostly by accident) when the owl arrived.

_Dear Auror Tonks:_

_Please report to the Auror Office on 17 July at 11:00 a.m._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Gawain Robards_

_Deputy Head, Auror Office_

She exchanged the trainers for her Auror boots and her Auror robes. They could keep her chained to the desk, but they couldn't keep her from wearing the uniform she had worked so hard to earn (and that she normally eschewed in favor of fishnet stockings and leather jackets, but that was hardly the point).

* * *

Robards and Scrimgeour were waiting for her in Scrimgeour's private office when she arrived.

"Have a seat, Auror Tonks," said Robards, his voice brisk and businesslike. Tonks hated him.

"I've read the _Daily Prophet_ ," she said. "I know I'm being reprimanded and I know I'm on desk duty for three months. Are we done?"

"We are not," said Robards. "You haven't been reprimanded yet. Have a seat, Auror Tonks."

"Sit down, Tonks," said Scrimgeour. She was so unnerved by his gentle tone that she obeyed. She had only heard him speak that way once: when they'd been in a rowboat somewhere in the North Sea and Scrimgeour had called Mad-Eye _Alastor_ and warned him away from Karkaroff.

"You are being formally reprimanded. This is your formal reprimand," said Robards importantly.

Tonks only just barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. "So noted," she said just as importantly, hoping that Robards would not notice that she was mocking him.

He didn't seem to notice. "Starting tomorrow, you will resume work on your usual schedule."

"Yes, Sir," she answered, because contrary to popular opinion she actually did know that there were moments when it behooved her to appear to be taking something seriously.

"Good," said Robards. "You may go."

She went.

* * *

Mad-Eye caught up with her just before she reached the Disapparition point. He pulled her aside; the bustling crowd paid them no mind.

"You'd have been put on desk duty anyway," he said bluntly. "It's normal after a kill, especially with you being so young."

"Wonderful," she said.

"It is," said Mad-Eye. "Scrimgeour did not want to reprimand you. He fought for you. That's a good thing, Tonks, to have the Head of Aurors on your side."

"Robards wanted to reprimand me. It made his day."

"Yes, Robards thinks he's the dog's bollocks because he got to play Head Auror for the day. Stupid move, really, because Scrimgeour's not impressed with the way he deferred to the Minister's office. I wouldn't be surprised if-" Mad-Eye broke off suddenly, and Tonks instinctively adjusted her stance and her grip on her wand. If Mad-Eye was worried, she was worried.

It took her a moment to realize what- or rather, who- Mad-Eye had seen.

Dolores Umbridge was something of a joke amongst most of the people who worked at the Ministry. She was short and squat, wore ridiculous bows in her mousy brown hair, and cleared her throat in a way that made a person want to punch her.

The best way to annoy Umbridge was to ask whether she was related to the Umbridge who used to mop floors around the Ministry. That janitor had been her father, but she always lied and claimed that he was of no relation.

Tonks laughed every time someone pulled that prank, to be sure, but it made her like Umbridge even less than she already did. Tonks couldn't imagine denying her father, and the few people who had had the nerve to suggest that she ought to marry a pureblood and rid herself of her Muggle surname had found themselves on the wrong side of a stinging hex.

"Auror Tonks," said Umbridge in a high, falsely girlish voice. "I believe your suspension does not end until tomorrow."

Mad-Eye chose that moment to pop his magical eye out of its socket and rinse it with a jet of water from his wand. "I've just asked Auror Tonks to wait a moment while I cleaned my eye," he said. "Sometimes it sticks."

Umbridge looked as if she were trying not to gag. It truly was disgusting when Mad-Eye removed his magical eye. He knew it, of course, and that was why he did it.

Tonks loved Mad-Eye.

"You're getting water on the floor, Auror Moody," said Umbridge with distaste.

"We'll clean it up," said Tonks solicitously. "We wouldn't want to make extra work for the janitor. Janitors are an important part of the Ministry, you know. People still talk about the one who used to work here years ago- wasn't his name Umbridge, too? Like you?"

"I wouldn't know." Her voice, if possible, became more shrill. She turned her attention back to Mad-Eye, who was reinserting his eye. "Auror Moody, members of the public can see you."

"Not as well as I can see them," said Mad-Eye, swiveling the eye about.

"You," said Umbridge, looking at Mad-Eye with real distaste, "are not presenting the image the Ministry wishes to present."

"Oh?" asked Mad-Eye. "Explain to me, then, while you escort me back to the Aurors' office."

"I will," said Umbridge. "Be on your way, Auror Tonks."

"See you tomorrow, Mad-Eye," said Tonks innocently, entirely intending to morph into someone else so she could follow them and see what else Mad-Eye did to aggravate Umbridge. But Mad-Eye knew her too well, and he closed the doors of the lift before she was able to put her plan into action.

She gave up and left. There would be time enough spent in this building tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

* * *

She hadn't heard from Remus since he'd sent her a note after the full moon assuring her that he was well and that Penny's potion had been effective. (She had never doubted Penny's skills as a potioneer. She would sooner have doubted her own ability to turn her hair pink.)

It was time for a surprise visit, she decided. It was her last day away from work and she meant to make it count. And if Remus was still feeling poorly after the full moon- she gathered that sometimes it took him a few days to recover- they would find something that he could do lying down.

She smiled devilishly to herself. She knew that she couldn't reasonably expect sex at this time of the month, but it would certainly be a nice distraction from Umbridge.

Her smile turned into a scowl. Umbridge was quite the mood killer. She would enjoy just complaining to Remus about Umbridge, and her horrible cardigans, and her comment in the _Daily Prophet_ , and the way she looked at Mad-Eye as if he were disgusting.

She knocked at his door and he let her in, looking exhausted but quite pleased to see her. She kissed him hello and asked how he was. He told her that he was very well, and asked after her own health.

"You haven't read today's _Prophet_ , then?" she asked sulkily.

"I'm afraid I have not." Concern flickered across his face, and he summoned a rolled-up newspaper from elsewhere in the cottage. "What am I looking for? Oh. 'Auror to Be Disciplined in Karkaroff Matter.' They _disciplined_ you, Dora? You didn't do anything wrong."

His outrage, and his certainty, made her anger melt away. Now she was almost giddy. She loved this man, and he loved her, and it was a delightful state of affairs.

"Dolores Umbridge," he said. She had never seen him speak about anyone with such obvious dislike. Not about Severus Snape, who insulted him at every turn. Not about Peter Pettigrew, who had betrayed the childhood friendship that had meant the world and more to Remus.

"You know her?"

"Not personally," he said. His lips were tight and his jaw was clenched. It was fascinating.

"Count yourself lucky, then," she said, trying to keep things light despite her rapidly increasing curiosity. "She made a point of speaking to me at the Ministry this morning. I think she was afraid that Mad-Eye might have been saying something kind to me, so she had to waddle over to stop him. We got her, though- Mad-Eye took out his eye, and-"

"Promise me you won't antagonize Dolores Umbridge."

"I can't promise you that. Antagonizing her is great fun. You should have seen-"

"It is _not_ great fun, Dora. The woman is a menace. You've met her. You know that she is a cruel, heartless, vindictive, bigoted, vile piece of filth who will abuse her power at every turn and never let a slight be forgotten. She does not believe in forgiveness or compassion or duty. She does not believe that other sentient beings are deserving of fairness or dignity. She is a danger to you because you are the embodiment of everything that frightens her. You celebrate differences instead of fearing them. You can trace your bloodline for centuries, but you don't care to because you believe in yourself and don't need to rely on who your great-great-grandfather may have been to believe that your own life is worth living."

It was perhaps the most impassioned speech she had ever heard him make.

It was captivating, the way his cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkled and his hands moved.

It was exhilarating to hear, see, _feel_ how highly he thought of her.

It was a ridiculous over-reaction.

"I know she's a blood purist," said Tonks. "And I know she's a snob. Doesn't like it known that her father used to mop the floors at the Ministry. But I track down actual dark wizards every day. She's hardly the most dangerous person I'm going to meet. Why are you so over-excited about Umbridge?"

He looked hard at her. "I suppose it's time," he said as if to himself. "I can't keep putting it off. It wouldn't be right."

"Putting _what_ off?" she asked keenly.

"There's something you should know. Have a seat?" She took a seat, quivering with curiosity. What on earth could possibly be a bigger secret than the fact that the man before her was a werewolf?

"You and Umbridge have a secret love child who was given up for adoption and is going to hunt you both down seeking revenge?" she guessed.

Remus looked at her, appalled. Without comment, he stalked to the liquor cabinet that had doubtless been well-stocked by Sirius. He retrieved a bottle of firewhiskey, poured himself a drink, and put the bottle and a glass on the table beside Tonks. "You may need this," he told her.

It wasn't _so_ early in the day, and she _had_ already sat through a scolding from Robards and an encounter with Umbridge. She poured herself a drink. It was smooth and delicious; Sirius purchased only the best.

"You know that I've been working on a project with Dumbledore these past few weeks," he began.

"Yes." She had been curious, and had teasingly asked a few questions, but she had understood when he'd told her that he couldn't tell her the exact nature of the meetings. She was, after all, an Auror. She expected that there would be times when it wouldn't be appropriate to tell him about her day at work, too.

"I've been showing my memories to the Headmaster in the hopes that we will be able to defeat Lord Voldemort with less pain and suffering than last time."

"He hasn't risen again," she said.

"He hasn't," agreed Remus. "But he would like to, and he has taken steps to make certain that he will be greater and more powerful than he was before."

"What do your memories have to do with it?"

"I have memories of the future. Not our future. I've already changed too much. But memories of another future, a future that could have been, a future that was…"

"You aren't making any sense," she said. She wondered if he had come through the full moon as well as he claimed that he had. Perhaps he had hit his head?

"There are only three other people who know about this," he said. "Sirius, Harry, and Dumbledore. I imagine that Snape knows some, though precisely how much he understands I couldn't tell you."

"Know about what?"

"It sounds unbelievable, Dora. I know that. I don't expect you to believe me, but I do expect you to use your discretion. The lives of the people you love may depend on it."

"You're scaring me."

"You should be afraid. It… was terrible last time. Your father, Sirius, Mad-Eye, Dumbledore… they all died, and that was just the beginning."

"My dad is fine!" she said. She stood up abruptly and the bottle of firewhiskey flew across the room, emptying itself as it went. "Why are you saying these things?"

"I'm saying that I lived through a second war against Voldemort, that I died in that war, and that I somehow traveled five years into the past with my knowledge of the future intact. To you, the first time that we met was in your mother's kitchen last summer. To me, we met for the first time in the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. I knew you well before I ever chose you to monitor my Defense classes last year. I was in love with you before you ever looked at me."

She stood in the whiskey-drenched room and considered telling him that it was ridiculous, that he was ill, that he needed a Healer.

She remembered the way he had known about the hidden wardrobe in her flat.

And he'd known her middle name even though she never told anyone her middle name.

Most of all it was in the way he'd kissed her.

She remembered what she'd said to Penny at Christmas.

_"It was the best kiss I've ever had and it wasn't even close. It was like he'd kissed me a thousand times and he knew what to do to make me feel good even before I knew. It was amazing."_

She'd chalked it up to his age and experience, but both Remus and Sirius had told her that Remus _had_ no experience.

"And Sirius and Dumbledore," she said, her ears ringing. "They believed you when you told them?"

"I showed them." She noticed, then, that a Pensieve sat on the table in the next room. Remus summoned it casually and drew a strand of memory from his mind. "Watch," he said unnecessarily.

* * *

Sirius and Remus were seated at a table, but Tonks could see at once that they were not the Sirius and Remus she knew.

Remus was dressed in robes that were little better than rags, so torn and frayed were they. He was thinner than he should have been and she wanted to reach out to him and offer him a square meal.

If Remus was thin, Sirius was emaciated. His cheeks were hollow and his fingers were skeletal as he drummed them on the table. "Who's watching Harry tonight?" Sirius asked.

"Dedalus," said Remus.

"He needs to be here," said Sirius. "Now, not next week."

There were other wizards and witches in the room. Tonks knew some of them- Bill Weasley was there, and Kinglsey of all people- but others she did not.

Then the door opened to admit someone new.

"Hello, Mad-Eye," called Sirius. "Nice out there today?" There was a bitter rasp to Sirius' voice.

Mad-Eye, like Sirius and Remus, looked much the worse for wear. His face was more lined than Tonks ever remembered seeing it. His limp was not his usual limp, but a slow and painful limp. He, too, was painfully underweight. He was almost fragile. "We've a new member, Sirius," said Mad-Eye. "Be a good host. Say hello to your cousin."

Tonks let out a surprised squeal as she saw herself enter the room behind Mad-Eye. She was dressed in her Auror's robes, and her hair was pink and spiky. Sirius, Remus, and Mad-Eye all looked sick and half-starved. She could have switched places with herself and not noticed a difference. The other Tonks was bubbly and cheerful as she reunited with her long-lost cousin.

"You're not mad?" the other Tonks asked as she stood a wand's length from Sirius. "You're not… dead?" She twisted to look at Mad-Eye. "We're not supposed to bring him in, are we?"

"We'd have to find a new headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix if we did," said Mad-Eye.

"Welcome to your ancestral home, Nymphadora," said Sirius with a great sweeping bow. "I've donated it to the Order. It's about all I've been able to do, mind, because as you say I'm a wanted criminal who is supposed to be mad or dead."

"Don't call me Nymphadora," the other Tonks said reflexively. "Tonks is fine. This is really… this is the ancestral home of the Blacks? Not very cheery, is it?"

"And you've not even heard your great-aunt's portrait scream at you for being an abomination yet," said Sirius.

"Save some of the surprises for later, Padfoot," suggested Remus. The other Tonks looked at him curiously.

"Remus Lupin," said Sirius rather theatrically, "allow me to present my first cousin, once removed, Nymphadora Tonks. Nymphadora, my dear friend Remus."

"Pleased to meet you, Nymphadora," said Remus. Both he and Sirius were definitely saying _Nymphadora_ as many times as they possibly could.

"Don't call me Nymphadora," the other Tonks said, a bit more emphatically. She flicked her wand into her fingers.

"There are people in this room you'd be able to disarm in a second," Mad-Eye wheezed. He looked so weak that Tonks almost didn't hear what he said next. "Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are not among them."

"Remus Lupin," said the other Tonks thoughtfully. "I know that name."

"Let me take you on a tour of the place before the meeting starts," said Sirius abruptly, and the other Tonks faded from sight as Remus helped Mad-Eye into a chair.

* * *

"That, to me, is the first time I met you," said Remus.

"What happened to Mad-Eye?"

"Barty Crouch, Junior, kidnapped him and kept him in a trunk for a year. Used his hair to make polyjuice potion and impersonated him. Brought about Voldemort's rebirth and nearly managed to kill Harry."

Tonks didn't know what to say. It looked true. It felt true.

"Let me show you the first time we… the first time you attempted to discuss our relationship and I behaved abysmally."

* * *

It was a spring night and Remus and the other Tonks were lying flat on their stomachs behind a hedgerow. They were obviously on some sort of surveillance duty.

"Is the Order everything you thought it would be?" Remus asked. "Lying in the dirt for hours on end while nothing happens?"

The other Tonks' hair was its natural brown color. Tonks supposed the surveillance required it. "I may be new to the Order, but I'm an experienced enough Auror to know that sometimes it's better if nothing happens."

"True. We would be rather under-prepared if Lord Voldemort chose tonight to visit his friend."

She grinned. "You and me? We could take him. At least, we could hold him off until the others got here. That's probably what we should do. Kingsley and Mad-Eye would be jealous if we didn't let them help."

"Not to mention Sirius. He didn't spend twelve years in Azkaban to miss out on this."

The other Tonks cocked her head with interest at the mention of her cousin. "He's still handsome, isn't he, even after Azkaban?"

Remus' face hardened with dislike. "I suppose you've fallen in love with him, then?" he asked derisively. "He always got the women."

The other Tonks, too, went rigid with anger. "You'd know perfectly well who I've fallen for, if you weren't too busy feeling sorry for yourself to notice," she snapped, and Remus stammered about, pretending not to know what she'd meant.

* * *

"I wanted to do better this time," said Remus as they stepped out of the memory. "I wanted you to know from the first that I- that I love you. I didn't want to push you, of course. You aren't the person now who you were then."

"I think we seem rather alike," said Tonks. "I understand her completely. When did you apologize and tell me you loved me too?" She couldn't imagine that he hadn't. "I want to see that."

"I'm afraid I made it rather difficult for you. I thought that I was protecting you, but perhaps I made you suffer needlessly. I'll show you the day we became involved, officially, but I warn you that there is a rather bleak backdrop to it all. The Death Eaters had just breached Hogwarts. Dumbledore was killed in the battle, and you'll see Bill Weasley lying maimed in a hospital bed."

She braced herself. She had seen worse.

* * *

The Hospital Wing at Hogwarts echoed with muffled sobbing.

"Dumbledore, gone," whispered one voice.

"Dumbledore, dead," said another.

Bill Weasley lay in bed, as Remus had warned her. His face was bleeding and mangled. Had it not been for his red hair, Tonks might not have recognized him.

An impossibly beautiful woman stood over Bill, and it took Tonks a moment to register that this was Fleur Delacour, who had represented Beauxbatons in the Triwizard Tournament. She turned furiously to a sobbing Molly Weasley. "You theenk Bill will not wish to marry me anymore?" she demanded. "You theenk, because of these bites, he will not love me?"

"No, that's not what I-"

"Because 'e will!" said Fleur, drawing herself up to her full height and throwing back her long mane of silver hair. "It would take more zan a werewolf to stop Bill loving me!"

"Well, yes, I'm sure. But I thought perhaps given how- how he-"

"You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per'aps, you hoped? What do I care how he looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!"

And all of a sudden, Molly Weasley and Fleur Delacour were a tangle of tears and hugs and wedding plans.

It was really quite moving, Tonks thought. She didn't see what it had to do with her, but she was glad that Remus had shown her this… memory? Vision? Story?

Then another voice cut across the sobbing, happy babble. "You see!"

Tonks turned toward the voice, so strained and aching that she hadn't at once recognized it as her own. She hadn't even seen herself in the room. The other Tonks looked morose and mousy, her skin sallow and her hair a lank brown. The other Tonks was glaring at the other Remus.

"She still wants to marry him!" shouted the other Tonks. "Even though he's been bitten! She doesn't care!"

"It's different," said the other Remus. His lips barely moved; he was visibly tense. "Bill will not be a full werewolf. The cases are completely-"

"I don't care either, I don't care!" said the other Tonks, seizing the front of the other Lupin's robes and shaking them. "I've told you a million times."

"And I've told you a million times." He didn't meet her eyes. Instead he stared at the floor. "I am too old for you. Too poor. Too dangerous."

"I've said all along you're taking a ridiculous line on this, Remus," said Molly Weasley. Tonks wondered what business it was of hers, even though she was obviously right.

"I am not being ridiculous," said the other Remus. "Tonks deserves somebody young and whole."

"But she wants you," said Arthur Weasley, who also seemed to think that this was his business. "And after all, Remus, young and whole men do not necessarily remain so." He gestured at Bill's mutilated body.

"This is not the moment to discuss it," said the other Remus. "Dumbledore is dead."

"Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think there was a little more love in the world," said Professor McGonagall. Whatever else she intended to say was interrupted by Hagrid's announcement that he had removed Dumbledore's corpse from the site of his death.

The images faded away.

* * *

Tonks looked at Remus in horror. "You were not being ridiculous," she said.

"I was," said Remus. "I was. We loved one another and you- I didn't give you the respect of believing that you knew your own mind. Not until that night."

"Not until I made a scene in a mutilated man's hospital room before Dumbledore's body was even cold!"

"Everyone's emotions were running high."

"She- I- I knew what Dumbledore meant to you, didn't I? Did she know what I know? How you revere him for letting you attend Hogwarts, and then letting you teach there? Did she know that? She had to have known that if she fancied herself in love with you, and she still humiliated you when you were trying to grieve for him, trying to help the Weasleys understand what happened to Bill- what was she doing?"

"You had had a terrible year," said Remus quietly.

"And it turned me into the kind of person who grabs a man and tries to shake him when he says he doesn't want me?"

"I never said I didn't want you, Dora. I always did."

"And why was my hair brown?"

"I'm afraid that's your natural color," said Remus with a valiant attempt at levity.

"I know why it was brown in the second memory. We were doing surveillance and I was trying to blend in. But this one, my hair and my skin… it wasn't that I was choosing not to morph, was it? It was that I _couldn't_ . It happens sometimes when I'm really, really out of control emotionally. The first time it happened was when my family found out that Sirius was going to Azkaban. My mum was devastated, and I missed him too, and… then the next time, it was when I understood what Bellatrix Lestrange was and that she was my aunt. As soon as I could morph again, I started morphing myself into her, trying to deal with it. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that in that memory, I was so upset over you that I couldn't morph."

"Yes," admitted Remus. "And I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what? You're not my keeper, no matter what you think you know from these memories you have of a woman I would never want to be!"

"She was a wonderful woman," said Remus. "And you are a wonderful woman, no matter what path you choose."

"She was an idiot," retorted Tonks coldly. "She had a family and friends and a job to do, and instead of focusing on that she decided to play out a little melodrama on Albus Dumbledore's grave."

"You're underestimating how much stress you were under," said Remus. "Almost a year to the day before this happened, there was a battle at the Department of Mysteries. You dueled your Aunt Bellatrix. She nearly killed you, and Sirius stepped in to take your place. She succeeded in killing him. You were seriously injured, and you blamed yourself for Sirius' death. You weren't even out of the hospital when I left to live with a pack of werewolves even though we both thought it was a suicide mission. The Ministry was about to fall. Your father was in danger because he was a Muggle-born. You had a terrible year, and the only thing that you could try to fix was you and me. So you tried. And you succeeded. Because of you, I experienced things I never thought were possible. You gave me hope in a dark time. You… you were one of the best things that ever happened to me even as the worst things were happening to you."

Tonks scoffed.

"I wish you wouldn't judge yourself, or _her_ if you insist on seeing the person in my memory as someone else, so harshly. Love makes people do strange things sometimes."

She knew that was true. She'd seen enough people make right fools of themselves over love.

She knew that that wasn't the life she wanted.

She wanted to be free and brave and powerful and joyful.

"I will do whatever you need me to do as an Auror, and I suppose as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, to help you and Dumbledore with whatever you're planning. All of your secrets are safe with me," she said. That was the easy part.

"Thank you," he said. He reached for her, but she pulled away. She regretted the pain on his face, but she didn't regret it enough to stop.

"You and I are no longer romantically involved."

"Dora," he said wheedlingly. She wasn't in the mood for wheedling. "I know this has come as a great shock. When Sirius found out, he hexed me in the back and spent the next twelve hours nearly drinking himself to death."

She became unpleasantly aware of the smell of Sirius' spilled whiskey. The smell of many a wasted life.

"Give yourself some time to think about it," said Remus.

"I've given it all the thought I need to give it. I don't want to be the kind of person who cares more about her unrequited crush than the war that's breaking out around her, and apparently you're the kind of person who does that to me."

He reached for her hand again, and this time, in a second of weakness, she let him take it. Holding his hand made her feel more alive, and more in love, than kissing any other man had ever done. It was odd, that interaction two people could have as if they were ingredients in a potion. It didn't make sense. It just was. "Dora, it was never unrequited. If- if I'd told you that I didn't love you, that I didn't want you, and you continued to pursue me then perhaps you would have been deserving of some of this anger, but-"

"Then let me be very clear," she said. She looked him in the eye and hated the anguish she saw as she disentangled their hands for the last time.

 _Compartmentalize_ , she reminded herself. _An Auror knows how to compartmentalize._

"I do not love you," she said. "I do not want you. You are not now, and never will be again, my boyfriend. Nor my fiance, nor my husband. I will never love you, and if you so much as attempt to pursue me romantically I will show you how an Auror defends herself. You are not too old, or too sick, or too poor. I simply do not love you and I never will."

Then she left.

She had lied, but she would make sure that one day the lie would be the truth. That was enough.

Her hand still burned where he had last touched her, and she thought that perhaps it always would.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer : Obviously, the third Pensieve flashback is from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (slightly modified here).


	56. Harry and the Birthday

The first weeks of July were the most pleasant Harry ever remembered spending with the Dursleys. It turned out that all he'd needed during those years he'd found himself dodging Dudley's fists and locked in the cupboard was a magical, rich, clever prison escapee of a godfather.

Harry was still doing a great many chores, but he didn't mind so much when Sirius was there to talk to him- and help out with a bit of magic as needed.

Almost every evening, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia made plans to evict Sirius the next day. Almost every morning, Sirius managed to distract them before they put their plan into action.

Usually the distraction involved Dudley, who had been forbidden to visit his friends unless their parents telephoned Aunt Petunia to confirm that he really was invited for tea. Dudley spent a lot of time hitting the punching bag Uncle Vernon had bought for him. One day he even invited Harry to try, which Harry did with great trepidation. He found, though, that it wasn't so bad. He could almost understand why Dudley liked boxing. It wasn't so different from dueling, after all; Professor McGonagall sometimes referred to students exchanging punches as "Muggle dueling."

Still, Dudley did blame Harry for the new restrictions on his life, and most of the time he was the same old Dudley who liked to taunt Harry about all the things he had that Harry did not. One evening, as they finished eating and Harry began to clear the table, Dudley launched into a recitation of the highlights of the trip he had taken with his friends for his fifteenth birthday.

"Sirius," asked Harry, "Can I have a party for my birthday? And invite all my friends from school?"

"You most certainly cannot!" bellowed Uncle Vernon, just as Sirius said "of course you can."

"We have been so impolite as to impose on your hospitality these past few weeks," said Sirius in his poshest tones, the ones that made Uncle Vernon pale and Aunt Petunia shiver. "We would like to give you the gift of letting you have a night at home to yourselves before we leave until next summer. Of course, Harry will want an overnight party, since he'll be turning fifteen."

That hadn't occurred to Harry. He'd never had a birthday party at all. He'd rarely even attended Dudley's birthday parties; most years, the Dursleys had left him with Mrs. Figg. He'd been pulled into one or two classmates' parties when Aunt Petunia hadn't been able to maneuver him out of sight quickly enough after they'd escorted Dudley to the door. Dudley had usually gotten Harry left out of games of pass the parcel and had always eaten Harry's share of the cake.

He'd asked to have a party to annoy Dudley, who was barely permitted to see his friends. He'd had no idea what he would do if Sirius had said yes.

But there had never been any chance that Sirius would say no.

"We'd better get the invitations out right away," Sirius was musing aloud. "Some of your friends will be traveling with their families at this time of year, so we don't want to be any more last minute about it than we already are."

Harry snuck a peek at the Dursleys. All three of them looked very unhappy. He hid his smile, and then remembered that he didn't have to hide it.

He did wish that he could smile because he was having a party rather than because he was irritating the Dursleys.

* * *

Later that evening, he sat on his bed and admitted to Sirius that he wasn't certain that having a party was a good idea after all.

"Because of the safety concerns after what happened at the Triwizard Tournament?" Sirius asked. "I agree, but I think I have an idea. There's a ballroom in Grimmauld Place. We'll enchant it so that it looks like a beach. You can have a bonfire, swimming, a treasure hunt, whatever you like. We'll separate it from the rest of the house so no one will get hurt or have to look at my parents' taste in decorating, but it will be completely private. Now, tell me your twenty favorite people from school. I'll Apparate to the post office and get the invitations out tonight."

"I don't know twenty people," said Harry. "No one would come other than Hermione and the Weasleys, anyway. And Hermione's visiting Viktor Krum in Bulgaria."

"Invite Krum, too," said Sirius casually. "From what I understand, he doesn't get to do very many normal things."

Harry knew the feeling.

"Neither do you," said Sirius, as if he had read Harry's mind. "Do you care so much if you invite people and they say no?"

Harry hadn't thought about it that way. "No," he admitted. He had been hunted by Voldemort and his followers since before he'd been born. He was destined to destroy Voldemort or die trying. He didn't care who wanted to attend his birthday party. "But I really didn't like the Yule Ball."

"This will be different," promised Sirius. "It won't be a performance because you'll only be inviting the people you know and like best. Hermione, Krum, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George. That's six. Give me fourteen more."

"Hagrid," said Harry. Hagrid had brought Harry his very first birthday cake, and Harry couldn't imagine anyone who would be happier to receive an invitation.

"Teenagers, Harry," said Sirius.

"I want Hagrid," said Harry stubbornly. "He's my friend."

He watched as Sirius considered arguing with him, then thought better of it. "Fine. But you still need thirteen. Do you really not like Neville Longbottom?"

Harry remembered the quiet conversation he and Sirius had had beside the Whomping Willow. Sirius had said that if he had raised Harry, Harry and Neville would have grown up together. Harry had meant to be nicer to Neville, and he thought he'd mostly managed it… "Yes, invite Neville." It would mean almost as much to Neville as it had to Hagrid. "Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas," he added resignedly. "Those are our other two roommates. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, so that's everyone in Gryffindor in our year."

"I can't believe there's only eight of you," said Sirius sadly. "It's a shame we were all so busy killing each other in 1980."

"I told you I don't know twenty people."

"Nice try," said Sirius. "Who are the girls on your Quidditch team?"

"Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, and Katie Bell." He supposed the twins would appreciate having them around.

"Fourteen down, six to go."

"Oliver Wood," said Harry drily. "He's left school, but if I'm inviting my whole Quidditch team…"

"Good," said Sirius. "Speaking of Quidditch stars, what about Cedric?"

"Cedric and Cho Chang." His stomach twisted uncomfortably. No one was going to come anyway, but as long as he was inviting Cedric he knew he ought to invite Cho. If Cedric did come (and Harry was afraid that Cedric was so nice that he just might), he ought to have Cho to talk to while he was ignoring the Weasley twins' usual comments.

Speaking of twins. "Parvati has a twin sister. Padma. She's in Ravenclaw. I don't know her at all, but…"

"Right. You may as well invite both twins. Gives you nine girls and nine boys, too. Balances out better for kissing games."

Harry felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. "We're not playing kissing games."

"Keep your options open," said Sirius nonchalantly. "One more."

Harry was almost certain he'd already invited everyone he'd ever spoken to and at least one person he hadn't. "Ernie MacMillan," he said at last. Ernie was rather pompous, and he had once accused Harry of attempting to murder the Muggle-born population of Hogwarts, but there was something about him that Harry liked, and at least they'd had a conversation or two during Herbology.

Sirius wrote Ernie's name on a scrap of parchment with a flourish. "Was that so hard?"

"Yes," said Harry, who still wasn't certain why he had agreed to this, let alone suggested it in the first place.

* * *

After Sirius vanished to the post office, Harry noticed that a roll of parchment had been left behind. He opened it quickly; what if it was Ron's or Hermione's invitation?

Instead, he found a letter from Sirius to Lupin. He sank to the floor and began to read. He didn't feel as if he was invading anyone's privacy; Sirius frequently passed Harry Lupin's letters after he had read them, and didn't mind if Harry looked over his shoulder when he wrote Lupin back. Most of Sirius and Lupin's letters were very short and vague and comprised of brief illusions to things they didn't want to put in writing. This letter was much longer.

* * *

Dear Mr. Moony,

Please be advised that you must keep your calendar open on the night of 31 July. Your services as chaperone and alleviator of parental concerns will be required when Harry throws himself a birthday party in the ballroom of Grimmauld Place. I have all but demanded that he invite twenty of his closest friends.

I don't know whether I did the right thing. Harry was reluctant to invite anyone other than the Weasleys and Hermione, and as it will be his birthday he ought to have whatever celebration he chooses. I would have chosen the same when I was fifteen- no one else but my fellow Marauders. It was James who liked to have the whole world celebrating him for at least a week. (It would doubtless have been the whole month if he hadn't been willing to cede the first half of March to you.)

Now that I think of it, I don't remember my fifteenth birthday. It would have been two months into our fourth year at school, and I'm certain that the four of us did something, but the years blend together now. There were presents and cake and my parents probably sent a howler. I wonder if I would remember if it hadn't been for Azkaban. Can you separate the memories of each birthday? Or do you have to stop and think about how old you are now, let alone how old you were then?

Harry told me last Christmas that he was trying to have a "normal" holiday. I know that he hasn't had very many happy birthdays or very many of the usual childhood experiences. He was marked, metaphorically, before he was even born. He was marked, literally, when he could barely walk and talk. So I thought that for his fifteenth birthday, perhaps I could give him something that he should have had when he was five or ten years old: a "normal" party. If by "normal" one means "egregiously expensive" and "requiring difficult specialized magic."

Neither of us knows exactly what the future holds, as much as we think we can make an educated guess. Harry has made it abundantly clear that he would not be willing to sit on the sidelines in the little matter of Voldemort even if that somehow became possible. I would expect nothing less of him. But in a world that has asked so much from him, I would like him to have the experience of inviting a dozen people he genuinely likes to a party- and seeing them be delighted to attend. I don't want him to think that that's something he can't do. I don't want him to think that no one would come. Next year, when he turns sixteen, I want him to be able to say "all I want for my birthday is a trip to the International Quidditch Qualifying Tourneys with Ron" not because he thinks that's all that is available to him but because he has experienced the alternative and found that he wouldn't choose it a second time.

In any event, we have still annoyed his relatives in the way they most deserve to be annoyed. When they say "Harry's birthday was never worth celebrating," they should live with the knowledge that many of us think nothing could be more worthy of celebration.

As I say: mark your calendar. And be warned I'll want a certain Auror there as well.

Regards,

Mr. Padfoot

* * *

Harry set the letter back where he had found it. He was glad that Sirius had left it behind. He felt better about the idea of having a party after reading it.

It wasn't until much later that it occurred to Harry that Sirius hadn't forgotten the letter at all- that Sirius had always intended for Harry to read it.

* * *

The owls started returning with breakfast and continued until mid-day. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked angrier with each new arrival, but Harry was too baffled to enjoy their displeasure.

* * *

This is GREAT! Who else is coming? Fred and George and Ginny are already making plans. I'm coming too, of course. -Ron

* * *

It's so wonderful that Sirius is letting you have a real party! Thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting Viktor too. He hasn't gotten to do many things like this, between school and Quidditch. He really likes you because you're a great flyer, and he decided what to get you as a gift as soon as he saw the invitation. Love from, Hermione

* * *

Hi Harry! Thank you for inviting us. Our parents want to talk to your godfather and whoever else is in charge, and they won't let us stay unless they're satisfied. But we'd really like to come. -Parvati (and Padma)

* * *

Harry- This is so cool! Dean is visiting me so we'll both come. -Seamus

* * *

Dear Harry,

Thank you for inviting me to your party. Your birthday is one day after mine. I never knew that. My gran isn't sure whether I'm allowed to come, but she said if she talks to your godfather first, I probably can.

Thanks again for inviting me,

Neville

* * *

Hi Harry!

Lucky this came in between training sessions. I'll see you on 31 July.

Oliver

* * *

Dear Harry,

I'm glad that you are having a birthday party. I mean that. Thank you for inviting me, and for inviting Cho as well. We'll both be there, and we're looking forward to it.

Cedric

* * *

Dear Harry,

You're having an indoor beach party? I have to see this.

-Lavender

P.S. Parvati says she can't come unless your godfather impresses her parents, so please tell your godfather to impress her parents!

* * *

Hi Harry!

Your birthday is one day before my family leaves for France, but I'd rather be tired in France than miss it. See you on the 31st.

-Alicia

* * *

Dear Harry,

Really, Grimmauld Place in London?! I've heard stories about that. I'm looking forward to seeing it, and you, of course.

Love,

Katie

* * *

Dear Harry,

Do you really think it was a good idea to invite Oliver Wood to your birthday party? He'll forget that he's not Quidditch Captain anymore (I am, by the way, just got the letter) and try to make us run drills.

Just kidding. I'll be there.

Angelina

* * *

Dear Harry,

Thank you for inviting me to your birthday party. I accept.

Ernie MacMillan

* * *

Dear Harry,

I'm so gad your godfather is letting you have a real birthday party. I'll stop by for a while- I miss seeing you in the summers, and of course I've got a gift for you.

Hagrid

* * *

Harry stared at the pile of parchment that had accumulated in front of him. "Everyone said yes," he said in disbelief.

"People at your school like you?" asked Dudley in just as much disbelief, pretending that he hadn't been cowering away from the last owl a moment before. He snatched at the letters. "Angelina… Katie… Alicia… Lavender… half of these are girls!"

"I wanted it to be balanced out for kissing games," said Harry with a straight face. (There were not going to be any kissing games. It was his party, and he wasn't sure how kissing even worked.)

Dudley looked as if someone had hit him with a body-bind curse. Harry snorted into his water glass.

* * *

In the days leading up to Harry's birthday, Sirius frequently vanished and returned looking very satisfied with himself. "Are you going to become a party planner when we've defeated Voldemort and you need something else to do?" Harry asked rather sarcastically one afternoon.

"No," said Sirius as if he hadn't noticed the sarcasm. "I've done almost none of the work myself. I could do some of those charms, but I'd rather let the professionals do it. Easier to reassure your classmates' parents that way."

Harry remained a bit nervous until he entered Grimmauld Place on his birthday. Sirius opened the front door to reveal a sort of tunnel instead of the dank entryway that had confronted Harry the last time he'd visited. He felt no urge to draw his wand; instead he wanted to follow the tunnel, narrow as it was. The top of the tunnel flickered with bright lights of every color.

"Wow," he breathed. The magical world would never cease to amaze him.

"The lights aren't even the part we had the professionals do," Sirius nodded. "That was Remus."

Harry nodded and began the slow climb upward. After he had climbed what seemed to be the equivalent of two flights of stairs, he stepped into a small room in which were scattered half a dozen chairs. He grinned when he saw Hagrid's familiar looming figure.

"Happy birthday, Harry!" Hagrid bellowed. "Brought yer a little summat, o'course."

"Thank you for coming," said Harry, happily accepting a hug and a roughly wrapped package from Hagrid. Without unwrapping it, Harry could tell that it contained a bar of Honeydukes chocolate and some of Hagrid homemade rock cakes, which made up in thoughtfulness what they lacked in taste.

"I wouldn' miss it. I had to see what yer godfather was up to with this great plan o' his. Was a troublemaker when he was yer age, but yeh couldn' help but admire his creativity."

"Thank you," said Sirius, and Harry couldn't tell whether he was thanking Hagrid for complimenting his creativity or thanking Hagrid for calling him a troublemaker. At the moment, it didn't matter. "Step in the rest of the way, Harry."

With happy butterflies in his stomach, Harry opened the door on the far side of the room and stepped through.

It was as if he had entered a different world. Warm sand shifted beneath his trainers. He was on a beach; the turquoise-blue ocean was not ten feet away. Each wave ended at exactly the same spot; it was this precision that reminded Harry that this was not entirely natural.

"How?" he asked Sirius.

"Don't ask how," said Sirius. "Just enjoy."

Tucked safely away from the ocean were two long tables. One was laden with bottles of butterbeer, piles of sandwiches, and all manner of cakes. The other held an enormous wrapped box, a radio currently playing the Weird Sisters, and dozens of rolls of parchment tied with colored ribbon. Two people were looking over the tables carefully; when Harry's eyes adjusted to the bright afternoon sun, he realized that it was Lupin and Tonks.

"Are they back together?" he asked Sirius quietly.

"No," said Sirius just as quietly. "She's being stupid and she's not in the mood to be talked round, so don't try."

Harry hadn't really been planning on trying, and presently Lupin and Tonks came over to greet him, both overly polite and overly enthusiastic. "Are you staying for my party?" he asked them.

"Only as chaperones," said Lupin, pointing to the waiting area. "We aren't going to spy on you and your friends. We're just making sure that no one decides he'd rather run around Grimmauld Place than stay on the beach. Which between you and me is exactly what I'd have done at your age."

"We're also going to reassure your friends' parents that you're supervised. I'm afraid we've promised that you won't be having any drunken orgies tonight," said Tonks.

Harry felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. "Is anyone expecting that?" he asked.

"Some of the questions your classmates parents' asked made me wonder," said Sirius. "The Patils, mainly. Though if I had fifteen-year-old twin girls that pretty, I'd be concerned about their whereabouts, too."

"It's nearly time," said Lupin, and without another word Tonks took off, tripping down the long narrow hallway with its multiple flights of stairs.

"She looks the least suspicious standing outside and waiting for guests to arrive," Sirius explained. "The house is unplottable, so she'll have to show them in. When someone arrives, she'll announce it with a-"

A beautiful white jackrabbit flew into the room and interrupted Sirius. "Hermione and Viktor are on their way."

"Is that a Patronus?" asked Harry keenly. "They can be used to send messages? Will we learn that in Defense next year?"

Lupin looked pleased. "It will be on the NEWT level curriculum, but I'll give you a tutoring session if you'd like to learn early. You already know how to cast a corporeal Patronus, and that's by far the hardest bit."

Hermione's voice, loud and excited, drifted toward them. _"The charmwork is beautiful, isn't it? I wonder if it's based around the Colovaria spell?"_

 _"I vonder if the passageway is so narrow because they put up false valls to hide the dark artifacts they could not remove,"_ replied Krum. _"That's vot ve vould do at Durmstrang."_

"He's not wrong," Lupin whispered to Harry. "But you needn't confirm it if you don't care to."

Hermione bounded into Harry's arms. He laughed at her enthusiasm. It had been about five weeks since he'd last seen her, but it seemed much longer. "Are we here first?" asked Hermione. "Good, I've missed you. I don't want to share you. "

When Hermione had disentangled herself from Harry, Krum solemnly shook Harry's hand. Harry wondered anew whether it had been a stupid idea to invite one of the best professional Quidditch players in the world to a party that would not, as Tonks had so helpfully informed him, be anything like a drunken orgy.

He didn't have time to do anything other than remind himself that no one had made Krum agree to come and no one was stopping him from leaving. The other guests were arriving quickly- the boys pounding Harry on his back, and some of the girls (primarily his Quidditch teammates) kissing him on the cheek. When the door closed behind the last arrival, it blended into the horizon and Harry could barely tell that they weren't really on a beach somewhere.

His fifteenth birthday party had begun.

**_To be continued._ **


	57. Harry and the Birthday 2

A pile of gifts had appeared on the table next to the rolls of parchment; the Weasley twins were tossing bottles of butterbeer at the other guests. It was good that Fred and George had come, Harry decided. They knew how to have a party even if Harry didn't.

Somehow the chatter fell silent when Ginny shrieked "oh, it's for pass the parcel!"

Harry barely stopped himself from blushing again. Pass the parcel was a primary school game! It was, frankly, a game he hated because every time a pitying adult had made certain to stop the music so that Harry would get a prize, Dudley told Aunt Petunia that Harry had stolen whatever-it-was.

"We don't have to play that," he said. He wasn't well-versed in the ways of parties, but he was reasonably certain that there was something in between drunken orgies and children's games.

"Why not?" asked Ginny. "It's here." She picked up the enormous, beautifully wrapped package that Harry had noticed when he'd first stepped onto the beach.

"Did Sirius arrange that, mate?" asked George interestedly. "Because if he did, it's probably not your ordinary game, with boring old explosions and acid pops if you open the wrong layer."

None of the birthday parties Harry had attended as a small child had involved acid pops or explosions of any kind, and he said as much since everyone seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

"Then we should play," Alicia decreed, and she gestured for Ginny to throw the box to her. Ginny did; Alicia caught it deftly. "You have a great arm," she told Ginny. "Do you play Quidditch?"

"She doesn't," said Fred, who snatched the box away from Alicia. Alicia looked like she might hex Fred- half of Harry's guests were old enough to do magic outside of school and half were not, which hardly seemed fair- but she refrained as everyone sat in a circle in the sand.

George removed the radio from the table and turned the volume up so high that it echoed off of the ocean. "I'll stop the music the first time. Whoever wins- or loses- first takes over for the next round."

There was a general murmur of agreement.

The game of pass the parcel was nothing like the games Harry had played as a young child in the Muggle world, and not only because Dudley was nowhere to be found. For one thing, more than half of the participants were very good Quidditch players who insisted on hurling the package across the circle as if it were a Quaffle. For another, only about half of the layers of the package concealed a prize that someone would actually want to win.

Lavender Brown ripped open the first layer of the package to reveal one of the Weasley twins' patented daydreams. She squealed with delight and skipped happily to the radio to take George's place. Harry tried to ask George whether they had known about this and given Sirius permission to use their products, but George pretended not to hear him over the music.

The next time the music stopped, the box was in Ginny's hands. She tore off a layer of glittering gold to reveal a bag of cockroach clusters, accompanied by a note instructing that she was required to eat them before the game could continue. "You were the one who wanted to play, Gin!" Ron hooted, and Ginny, glaring at them all, fixedly ate the entire package in one gulp and announced that she'd found it delicious.

The next layer revealed a small bottle of firewhiskey and a note stating that if the recipient was under the age of seventeen, he or she had the option of passing it to the first person to his or her right who was of age. It landed in Dean Thomas' hands, and he decided to down the drink himself to much applause.

"Sirius shouldn't have done that," hissed Hermione under her breath.

"Shut up," answered Ron. "Of course he should have. Ginny's the youngest and smallest, and even she can handle that much. And she's got three older brothers here. It's pass the parcel, Hermione, it's fine."

That was when the box hit Ron in the face and Dean shut off the music. Ron unwrapped another layer of the wrapping to reveal a set of fireworks that exploded overhead as soon as Ron held them up for all to see.

Ron laughed and went to take his turn with the radio.

Ernie MacMillan received a beautiful quill, and Padma Patil a bar of Honeydukes chocolate, and Cho Chang a silly hat which she gamely placed on her head with a wink at Harry. Harry's stomach turned a somersault, and he groaned inwardly. He'd hoped that he would stop thinking Cho was quite so pretty once he and Cedric had become friends.

When the parcel was reduced to about half of its original size, it became abundantly clear to Harry that everyone else was conspiring to make certain that he would receive the last, biggest prize. He wasn't sure how to feel about it. Some of it felt like the pity he'd received from his classmates' parents ten years before. The rest of it felt rather nice, because it meant that everyone in the room genuinely liked him.

Viktor Krum won an acid pop with a note that he was required to lick it at least ten times. Krum not only licked it ten times, but crunched the rest of it between his teeth and swallowed it. Ginny saluted him; some of the others applauded. Neville won a pair of Omnioculars and looked delighted. Cedric won a small set of lotion and perfume which he quickly presented to Cho, who blushed. Harry pretended that he didn't care.

Hermione won a voucher good for a new book at Flourish and Blotts, and suddenly she didn't seem to think that Sirius had done such a bad job after all.

And then the package had been unwrapped down to its very last layer. Oliver threw it to Harry, who threw it to Katie, who threw it to Harry, who threw it to Ernie, who threw it to Harry, who threw it to Parvati, who threw it to Harry, who threw it to Neville, who threw it to Harry just as the music stopped. Harry supposed there was nothing else he could do but open it to reveal a Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes box containing shoe covers that would let the wearer walk on the walls or ceiling for 30 minutes. Harry laughed at the others applauded.

It was brilliant.

"What else is on that table?" asked Ron eagerly. "What are the rolls of parchment?"

* * *

The rolls of parchment turned out to be instructions that divided them into teams of four for a scavenger hunt. Harry no longer doubted Sirius' decision to include children's games at his fifteenth birthday party. Obviously Sirius knew more about this kind of thing than he did- or at the very least, Sirius had asked Fred and George what to do.

Harry found himself partnered with his roommate Seamus Finnigan, his Quidditch teammate Katie Bell, and Viktor Krum. He was interested to see how seriously Krum took the competition. Krum saw Harry watching and gave Harry an embarrassed sort of smile. Harry thought he knew exactly what the smile meant:

_I don't get to do silly things and act like a child very often. I'm enjoying it._

Harry knew the feeling.

They frantically unraveled the clues, darting in and out of the water as they did. The water turned out to be deep enough to swim, but not so deep as to require swimming. Harry still worried when Katie put her head under the waves for what Harry thought was far too long a time, and Harry dragged her out of the water by looping an arm around her waist.

"I almost had it, though!" Katie protested. "There's a puzzle box down there, and we just need to get the lid off to find the last clue, I'm sure of it."

Krum drew in a deep breath and ducked under the water where Katie had been. There wasn't really enough room for Harry to duck under the water, too, and besides his glasses would have gotten in the way. And so he stood with his arm looped around Katie's waist as she tried to catch her breath. It was no different than it might have been after a long Quidditch practice.

Except it _was_ different, because at Quidditch practice neither he nor Katie was ever half naked. Most of the party-goers had stripped down to swimwear when the scavenger hunt had directed them into the water, and Harry had been so focused on winning that he hadn't thought much of it. But now he was painfully aware that he was touching Katie's bare waist (she was wearing a bikini top that did not leave much to Harry's imagination) rather than layers of protective Quidditch gear.

He dropped his arm quickly, and that somehow resulted in his arm brushing against Katie's breast. (At least that was covered.)

It was ridiculous. He had hugged Katie hundreds of times on the Quidditch pitch, and he would have grabbed her by any part of her body to keep her from getting knocked from her broom by a bludger. Now he stepped away from her as subtly as he could and was grateful that he was standing in cold water.

Seamus looked at him and sniggered.

It had to be Seamus on his team. But better Seamus than another of the girls, Harry decided.

Meanwhile, Krum emerged victorious and they all darted out of the water, running as fast as they could toward the food table where another clue was hidden.

* * *

The team made up of Ginny, Cho, Alicia, and Dean won the competition and were awarded vouchers to be redeemed at Quality Quidditch Supplies as well as the right to light the bonfire, which they did with great fanfare. The magical sun was setting; a beautiful twilight settled across the beach.

"No more games?" asked Angelina disappointedly as she studied the second table, which was now empty but for the gifts Harry's friends had brought. Harry couldn't believe the size of the pile. It looked like the Dursleys' kitchen table had always looked on Dudley's birthday when they'd been in primary school. Everyone had brought him something even though he hadn't wanted or needed anything.

"Doesn't mean we can't play our own," said Fred with a devilish grin. He grabbed one of the empty butterbeer bottles and held it above his head. "The oldest of all the party games- spin the bottle." His eyes fell discontentedly on Ginny. "But if one person is of age and the other person is underage, kissing on the cheek only."

Ginny looked like she might protest, but Harry noticed relieved nods from some of the older boys and immediately agreed to Fred's suggestion.

"If it lands on the same two people more than once, you have to kiss for thirty seconds the second time," George added.

"If you're related to the person the bottle lands on, you take the next person to the left," Fred concluded.

"Any other rules?" asked Fred.

No one volunteered any.

They settled back into the circle they'd used to play pass the parcel, tired and damp from the scavenger hunt and happy to be beside the warmth of the bonfire.

"Harry spins first," said Angelina, and everyone else seemed to accept this as perfectly natural.

Harry tried to look as if he thought it was perfectly natural, too, rather than perfectly terrifying.

He reminded himself that he had faced Voldemort before and would face him again, and that kissing a girl for the first time in his life in front of an eager audience was nothing compared to that. If Voldemort did end up killing him, after all, he might as well experience kissing before it happened and see what the fuss was about.

He grasped the bottle and spun it. It slowly came to a stop between Seamus and Katie, and Seamus, not bothering to hide his giant grin, shifted so that the bottle was definitively pointing at Katie.

 _Katie_ .

She was pretty, and Harry did like her well enough in a Quidditch teammates sort of way. It could have been worse. It could have been Ginny, whose three older brothers definitely would have forgotten that Harry was their friend. It could have been Hermione, and then both Krum and Ron would have been furious. Worst of all, it could have been Cho, who was still so very pretty and so very enamored of Cedric.

Harry met Katie's eyes and she nodded encouragingly, just as if they were learning a new play to defeat Slytherin for the House Cup. They crawled toward the center of the circle on their hands and knees. Someone helpfully shouted that Katie should try to make Harry's glasses fog up, and then there was a quick taste of Katie's fruit-flavored lip gloss against Harry's mouth, and then it was over and he had survived.

Krum spun the bottle next, and Harry wondered if he'd somehow fixed the spin by concealing his wand up his sleeve, because the bottle pointed squarely at Hermione. Krum kissed Hermione more passionately than Harry would have preferred, and definitely more passionately than Ron would have preferred if the way Ron's ears and nose reddened was any indication.

Luckily, Fred went next and the bottle landed on Oliver Wood. Harry half-expected Fred to object, but instead Fred kissed Oliver squarely on the lips. Oliver responded with a derogatory comment about Fred's kissing technique. Harry was able to laugh and enjoy the game along with everyone else until it was Lavender's turn to spin, and the bottle pointed at Harry.

Lavender crawled dramatically across the circle and all but climbed into Harry's lap before Harry had moved an inch toward her. The kiss with Lavender lasted longer than the kiss with Katie. Lavender was wearing fruit-flavored lipgloss, too, but it was a different flavor. Were all girls assigned their own particular flavor at birth? No, that was silly. But did they coordinate to decide who wore which flavor? That seemed like the kind of thing they might giggle about when they were spending hours getting ready for a Yule Ball. He wanted to ask Hermione, but he thought that she wouldn't be very impressed with the question. He decided that he would ask Sirius instead.

What had Katie and Lavender tasted when they'd kissed Harry, since he wasn't wearing any kind of lipgloss? He hastily tried to remember what he'd eaten for the last day, or perhaps the last month.

When Ron's turn came he ended up kissing Padma Patil. She looked irritated; he looked too shell-shocked to notice her irritation. When Hermione spun, the bottle landed on Angelina, and because Angelina was 17 and Hermione 15, they were permitted to kiss on the cheek.

Cedric spun; like Krum, he somehow seemed to know how to make the bottle do whatever he wanted, and Harry looked away as Cedric kissed Cho. But then it was Cho's turn, and the bottle landed on Harry.

It was the one thing Harry had least wanted to happen. He approached Cho, reminding himself that he had done this twice already tonight, and that they would barely have to touch one another, and that this was nothing like what he occasionally imagined when Cho winked at him because everyone including Cedric was staring at him.

The tiny kiss sent a jolt straight to his stomach, and someone yelled at Harry for not letting everyone else have enough turns, and then it was over. Seamus spun the bottle and ended up kissing Ginny as her brothers scowled.

* * *

After the game ended, they decided to break for more food. There was some talk of transitioning into a round of truth or dare, but instead everyone drifted into smaller groups and settled near the fire, talking and eating. As the night grew darker and darker, Harry found himself sinking into the warm sand with Ron on one side and Hermione on the other.

In between Ron and Hermione was where Harry almost always preferred to be. It was what made him feel safest and strongest even when he was in his godfather's house surrounded by a group of people who all wanted to come to his party.

The party, he decided, reminded him a bit of his first trip to the Burrow to visit Ron before their second year at Hogwarts. He'd had trouble adjusting to the noisy, crowded unexpectedness of the Burrow- but above all it had come as a perpetual surprise that everyone there seemed to like him.

He didn't exactly sleep that night under the stars. (Hermione pointed out that the some of the constellations were in the wrong part of the sky for this time of year so the enchantment hadn't been done with perfect accuracy.) But he did feel as if he'd been rather rudely awakened when the sky brightened up suddenly and Tonks' magically amplified voice announced that it was 6:00 in the morning and that anyone who had early plans that day needed to get moving.

The food table was now covered with bacon and sausage and eggs and tomatoes and fried bread and black pudding and potatoes. Pumpkin juice had replaced butterbeer.

Some people got up right away and got ready to leave as Tonks' voice warned them that the _Daily Prophet_ had a reporter stationed at the end of the street to see who came out. Almost everyone else resumed sleeping or pretending to sleep.

It was nearly noon when Harry and Sirius returned to the Dursleys'.

* * *

"Last chance," said Sirius once they were back inside Harry's bedroom. "Tell me where you want to spend the rest of your holiday, or I choose."

Harry's head was still spinning with sleepiness and the revelation that he had somehow kissed three girls the night before when he'd never kissed any girls in the first fifteen years of his life. "We don't have to go anywhere," he said. "We can just go to Hogsmeade, or Lupin's place in Yorkshire, or Ron said I'm invited to the Burrow whenever I'd like to come."

"No," said Sirius seriously. "What Ginny said in June was right. After everything you learned last year and before everything you plan to do going forward, you need to experience something different."

"The party was different," said Harry.

"That was one day. You need a real break. You don't train every single day for Quidditch because it's counter-productive, right?"

"I don't think Wood ever felt that way."

Sirius ignored Harry. "And I know you know about Quidditch because every single one of your guests brought you a Quidditch-related birthday present. We might need to get you a second hobby."

Harry didn't want a second hobby, and he certainly didn't want to give up any of his wonderful gifts. Best of all had been a new aerodynamic helmet that was only available to professionals- that, of course, had come from Krum.

He also didn't want to think about where to go next. There were too many options.

"You choose, then," he told Sirius, and he yawned and stretched out on his bed.

When they left the next morning, they packed everything that Harry would need for the new term at school. All they left behind in Harry's bedroom was a copy of an article that had run on the front page of the _Daily Prophet._ Harry smiled as he imagined the Dursleys reading it.

* * *

Boy Who Lived Lives It Up With Exclusive London Party

The famously reclusive Harry Potter, 15, has thrown himself what sources tell the Daily Prophet is his first real birthday celebration.

"His parents weren't around when he was growing up and his Muggle relatives didn't understand what it meant to be the Boy Who Lived," a source reports. "Now that his godfather is back in his life, he's catching up on the experiences he missed."

The wild night had a Quidditch flavor as Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum and Puddlemere United Keeper Oliver Wood were in attendance. Also spotted was Cedric Diggory, who represented Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the recent Triwizard Tournament.

The rest of the guest list was comprised of pretty girls in bikinis and skimpy tops. They began to leave the party at 7:00 a.m.; one was heard to mention that her family would be traveling to France in the afternoon.

Rumor has it that the Boy Who Lived's very protective godfather, infamous Azkaban escapee Sirius Black, created a beach inside an unplottable building and kept Aurors and other defense experts on hand.

"Nothing is more important to Sirius than Harry's safety," the source explains. "But he also wants Harry to have fun."

It appears as if fun was indeed had.

**_To be continued._ **

* * *


	58. Harry and the Hotel

The only Muggle hotel Harry had ever visited had consisted of gloomy rooms furnished with small beds and damp, musty sheets. The Dursleys had stayed there for one night in a futile attempt to keep Harry from receiving his Hogwarts letter.

That Muggle hotel bore no resemblance to the Muggle hotel to which Sirius had taken him. (Side-along Apparition, Portkey, side-along Apparition again.) Harry wouldn't have thought that this hotel was a Muggle hotel at all. It felt magical. It felt a bit like his birthday party, which might have meant that it felt like Sirius.

The beds in their room were enormous and soft. The sheets were the brightest white Harry could imagine, as if they were daring someone to challenge their cleanliness. There was a television so large that Harry knew that it would make Dudley jealous. There was a round table surrounded by chairs; atop the table sat a menu inviting them to order whatever food they liked to be brought to their room within fifteen minutes. The room was decorated with many paintings: some colorful, some more muted, but all of them welcoming.

Best of all was the balcony. When Harry stepped onto it, he was greeted by an enormous bright pink bird that looked up at him from beside the lagoon below.

"Sirius?" asked Harry. "Why is there a flamingo outside?"

"Why shouldn't there be a flamingo outside?" asked Sirius nonchalantly. "Let me know if one of the zebras comes over. I've never seen one of those."

"How much did this cost?" asked Harry.

"It's crass to ask about money," said Sirius. Harry had to peek quickly around the corner to make certain that Sirius was joking. Sirius grinned. "About 67 galleons a night. Why?"

"Just curious," said Harry. He wasn't certain whether he really was merely curious, but it was nice to be able to ask questions and get answers. Meanwhile, one of the zebras did come over, along with a gazelle and something the chart affixed to the balcony wall informed him was called a kudu.

The chart was printed in ten different languages. That made sense; Harry had heard people speaking several languages, and speaking English with more accents than he could identify, in the hotel lobby.

"Why are we living in a zoo?" he asked Sirius.

"It's not a zoo, it's a _resort_ ," Sirius corrected loftily. "And I offered to let you choose where to go, and you didn't have any suggestions."

"So do we just sit on the balcony and watch the animals?" Harry asked. He thought that that might get boring after a while.

"Maybe later. It's almost time for your first swimming lesson, now, so you should get ready for that."

Harry's stomach turned over unpleasantly. During the Triwizard Tournament, Sirius had said that he wanted Harry to take swimming lessons this summer. Harry had hoped that Sirius had forgotten. "I can swim well enough," he tried.

"No, you can't," said Sirius. "I want to know that if a Death Eater drops you in the middle of the Black Lake, you'll be able to swim back to the shore before you freeze to death. Right now I don't know that."

"Wouldn't the Death Eater just kill me?" Harry asked.

"Death Eaters do strange things. I heard Bellatrix bragging once that-" Sirius broke off with a scowl on his face. Harry knew that Sirius didn't like to talk about his cousins (other than Andromeda and Tonks, of course), and so he dropped the subject and got ready for his swimming lesson.

They were several thousand miles from home, he reminded himself. He wouldn't know anyone. And if he was going to be three times the age of his classmates, well, what was that compared to knowing that Voldemort would kill him if he and his friends didn't manage to kill Voldemort first?

* * *

To Harry's surprise, they bypassed the enormous pool with its waterslide and canopy of palm trees. Instead, they ducked through an almost-invisible gap in the foliage that led them to a small lagoon surrounded by bright green leaves and bright red flowers. The only other person in sight was a man who smiled as if he had been waiting for them.

"Harry and Sirius?" he asked, reaching out to shake their hands. "I'm Alex." Alex had an American accent and a smile that was a bit too wide. He looked at Sirius curiously. "Were your parents astronomers?"

"Yes," said Sirius. "My brother Regulus was lucky- he could go by Reggie and no one thought the name was odd."

Alex laughed, apparently thinking that Sirius was joking. "Are you ready for your swimming lesson, Harry?"

It was to be a private lesson, then, Harry realized with relief. He mentally apologized to Sirius for doubting him and agreed that he was ready for the lesson after all. "I can swim," he explained to Alex. "I'm just not very good at it."

"Because of the glasses?" asked Alex. Harry didn't know what to say. He certainly wasn't in the mood to answer _because my cousin is a mean, bullying git, and my aunt and uncle hate me._ "How bad is your eyesight?" Alex prompted when Harry didn't answer.

"It's awful," said Harry. Sirius chuckled from behind him, and Alex turned his attention to Sirius.

"This happens a lot with kids who can't see very well without their glasses. Swimming is that much harder to learn if they have to do it blind. More and more of my clients lately are adults who didn't swim as children. With that LASIK surgery becoming more and more popular, they come to me to re-learn now that they can see in the water."

Harry watched as Sirius pretended to know what LASIK surgery was. Harry didn't know, either, and he doubted that he wanted to know. He didn't entirely agree with Ron when Ron referred to doctors as "those Muggle nutters who cut people up" but he didn't want anyone taking a knife to his eyes, either.

"… Of course for someone Harry's age, there's always prescription swim goggles if he's really into it. Pricey, though. Is that something you and your son would like?"

Harry didn't hear what Sirius said in response. His head was spinning with the strangeness of hearing Alex refer to Sirius as his father.

It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, of course. Sirius had probably told the hotel that they were father and son; they weren't hiding from anyone, exactly, but they were less likely to draw attention to themselves that way. Even if Sirius hadn't said anything, he and Harry were clearly both from England. They had the same pale skin and black hair.

He remembered the day he'd overheard Professor McGonagall talking about his father and Sirius. _You'd have thought they were brothers…_

In the wizarding world, strangers often knew more about Harry than Harry knew about himself. Harry never had to explain that his parents were dead or that he had recently made the acquaintance of his wrongfully imprisoned godfather. Everyone realized that already. No one ever assumed that Harry had a father.

This world, the one he and Sirius had stepped into, was strange.

The very air around them was strange. It was hot and almost liquid against his skin. He had never experienced anything quite like it: not on the hottest days of summer on Privet Drive, and certainly not at Hogwarts where even the warm spring days led to cold nights when the fires burned purposefully in the house common rooms. The hot liquid air would have been very unpleasant if he hadn't been able to walk into a cool building or slide into the water whenever he liked.

His mind returned to his lesson only when Alex told him to get into the water and swim across the lagoon. He obeyed, enjoying the feel of the water against every inch of his body.

"Well, you won't drown," said Alex cheerfully after Harry had swum two laps of the lagoon. "But I think we can make this more fun for you." And for the next half-hour, Alex chattered on about when Harry should turn his head and at what angle he should put his hands into the water and how one of Harry's legs was moving faster than the other. Alex's corrections were always interspersed with praise so effusive that it was almost embarrassing.

"Great work, Harry," said Alex at the end of the session. "See you tomorrow."

Harry was barely able to reply before Sirius had rushed him back to their room. With a quick flick of Sirius' wand, Harry was clean and dry again. "Get dressed," said Sirius. "We're going to see the optometrist." He pronounced _optometrist_ in the way wizards always pronounced new Muggle words that they were proud to have learned. Harry was intimately familiar with this particular intonation, having conversed on multiple occasions with Arthur Weasley.

"Why?" asked Harry. One of the few things Aunt Petunia had always done to make Harry's life better was make certain that his prescription was up-to-date. Of course, Dudley always punched Harry on the nose and broke Harry's glasses every time he got new ones. And Aunt Petunia probably only bothered because she didn't want the neighbors or the teachers to talk about her half-blind nephew stumbling about without proper medical treatment. But however bitterly she'd complained each time she'd driven Harry to get his vision checked, she had always done it.

"So you can get goggles," said Sirius, as if Harry were being very stupid.

"If the Death Eaters try to drown me, I don't think they'll give me a chance to get my special prescription goggles," said Harry. "If they were going to let me get something, I'd rather get my wand."

"Very amusing," said Sirius. "You can't use your wand while you're having lessons with a Muggle instructor, and you'll be able to use your goggles when you play Quidditch too."

Harry's heart leapt. He remembered well the first time he'd been blinded by rain while playing Quidditch. He'd been hopeless until Hermione had thought to put a water-repelling charm on his glasses. Proper goggles would be even better.

"Let's go," he said to Sirius, who asked the nice clerk at the reception desk to call them a car.

* * *

Three days later, Harry had new prescription goggles. He'd already been enjoying the swimming lessons; he'd always liked his PE classes in primary school even though Dudley had made sure that he was picked last whenever they'd had to choose teams for any reason. But now that he could see underwater- _and without magic!_ \- the lessons became great fun. He hadn't realized how much energy he'd been spending on trying to see what he was doing.

Now Alex was of the opinion that Harry ought to join his school's swim team and Sirius looked extremely satisfied with himself.

* * *

When Harry wasn't at swimming lessons, he and Sirius found plenty of other things to do. One day, as they walked past a beach, a group of Muggles playing volleyball invited them to join in. Harry had never played volleyball before, but he found it great fun and he helped his team win. Sirius rolled his eyes and said he was going to sign Harry up for every class the resort offered to see if he could find something Harry was bad at. The fencing class, Harry found, was rather strange; but, as with Dudley's half-hearted boxing lesson, he noticed that there was some overlap with dueling. Sirius took the rock climbing class alongside Harry, and they both decided that they ought to do it again at the soonest opportunity.

They went on a safari through the part of the resort where the wild animals lived and watched the animals being fed. Harry couldn't help but remember Dudley's eleventh birthday trip to the zoo with a smile. He asked their guide whether there were any snakes, wondering whether he could ask a snake whether it disliked living here as much as the snake in the London Zoo had disliked living there. "None that we've brought in," said the guide. "But there are a lot of native snakes and we can't always control where they go."

"What kind?" asked Harry keenly.

The guide shook his head as if there were too many to count. "Copperheads, cottonmouths, racers, water snakes, pythons, boa constrictors, rattlesnakes… if you see one, let someone who works here know, don't try to make friends with it."

Harry nodded and pretended to agree. He didn't see any snakes, though, so it didn't matter in the end.

The next day, Harry and Sirius rented a boat and might have gotten stuck in the winding stream that circled the resort had Sirius not surreptitiously used his wand to free them.

At night, the resort showed films projected on a large screen outdoors. Harry hadn't heard of most of the films because they had been released after he'd begun spending ten months out of the year at Hogwarts. He was surprised when Sirius casually said that Tonks had gone to see _Four Weddings and a Funeral_ with one of her friends and enjoyed it. He was slightly uncomfortable throughout _The Lion King_ , although he couldn't have said why. And he was worried when, after they watched something called _The Shawshank Redemption_ , Sirius barely said a word for the next two days.

* * *

It was very abrupt, then, when Sirius asked whether Harry wanted to invite Hermione and the Weasleys to stay with them for the last week of the holiday.

Harry almost said no. Sirius seemed so darkly unhappy; would the presence of the Weasleys and Hermione make it worse? Would Hermione tell another adult that she thought Sirius was dangerous- as she'd done with the Firebolt- and convince someone to keep Harry from spending time with Sirius? What if the whole plan to defeat Voldemort unravelled?

Then he remembered how many times Ron had invited Harry to stay at the Burrow, and thought about how much Ron would like to eat the banana-stuffed french toast served for breakfast in the restaurant across from the pool, and he decided that he _couldn't_ refuse to invite them.

"Yes," he told Sirius.

Sirius pointed at the telephone. "You know how to use that? To call Hermione?"

Harry nodded.

"We can't send an owl across the ocean. If she and the others say they can come, tell them to owl Remus. He'll get them here."

Hermione, in a fit of overstudying and paranoia, had once insisted that Harry memorize her telephone number. Harry supposed that he had to admit that she'd been right to do it, and he dialed the numbers carefully. There was a long pause, and a crackling sound, before Hermione herself answered.

"Hi, Hermione," he said. "It's Harry."

There was a long pause. Hermione said hello again as if she couldn't hear him; then she called his name with delight. "Harry, where are you? You sound really far away. There shouldn't be a delay like that."

"I'm in the United States," he told her. "In Florida. Do you and Ron and Ginny and the twins want to come?"

"Yes! I've never been there! I know Ron and Ginny will want to come, too, we've been wondering where Sirius took you, Ron even had his father ask Auror Tonks where you'd gone but she said she was sworn to secrecy. Fred and George won't be able to come, I don't think. Mrs. Weasley saw their marks and she's furious with them again. Then she found their Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes account book- they were really organized about their finances, I'm surprised- and she realized that someone gave them a startup loan. They won't tell her where they got the money, and she's grounded them until they do, and they've threatened to drop out of school-"

Harry listened with concern as Hermione explained what had happened. Mrs. Weasley was very nice, and she had always treated Harry almost as a seventh son (when surely six sons and a daughter were enough for anyone). He knew perfectly well that Sirius had given the money to Fred and George and, what's more, that Sirius was letting them store their products in his little house in Hogsmeade. He ought to tell Mrs. Weasley… he ought to tell Sirius to tell Mrs. Weasley.

He didn't say any of that to Hermione. Instead, he told her to owl Professor Lupin and that he would see her soon.

"It'll be wonderful!" Hermione gushed.

It would be wonderful, Harry agreed.

But not quite as wonderful as it would have been if Sirius hadn't silently stopped eating and Mrs. Weasley wasn't furious with the twins.

He couldn't quite bring himself to ask Sirius to fix the argument between Mrs. Weasley and her sons, not when Sirius was staring at the wall as if he hadn't been able to hear Harry's end of the conversation (and most likely Hermione's part, too, as excitedly as she'd been talking).

He could only tell Sirius that Hermione had said that she would come and she thought that Ron and Ginny would come as well. Sirius pulled his gaze away from the wall with an obvious effort and forced something like a smile.

Harry knew what it looked like when Sirius smiled. This wasn't it.

But Sirius said that he would get another room, and that if Hermione and Ginny and Tonks all came, they would stay there, and Ron and Lupin would stay with Sirius and Harry.

* * *

It was less than a day later when Harry heard the familiar sound of Ron and Hermione arguing.

"It's not as if it's Harry's fault!" Ron shouted.

"I didn't say it was!" Hermione answered, rather shrilly. "That's a straw man argument. You're only trying to make it about Harry because you know I'm right."

"I don't even know what a straw man argument is!" objected Ron. "And it's about Harry because the article was about his birthday party."

"I don't care who the article was about. I care that the writer decided to name the boys, at least some of you, but only talked about what the girls were wearing. Or not wearing. It made it sound like Harry invited the boys because of who they are and the girls because of what we look like. If you want to make this about Harry, you should be insulted on his behalf."

Harry threw the door open. "I don't need anyone to be insulted on my behalf," he told them, enjoying their surprise as they took two long strides past the room before stopping short, comically, and turning to look at him.

Ginny, who had been trailing behind the others, bounded into the room, brushing past Harry like a puff of flowery air. "Don't even bother to try to stop them," she advised. "They've been having this argument for four hours. And I have a secret message for you." She pulled Harry out onto the balcony before Ron and Hermione realized what had happened.

"A secret message?" asked Harry.

"From Fred and George," said Ginny. She'd been confident enough when she'd grabbed Harry by the arm, but now she looked again like the shy girl who hadn't been able to sit in the same room as Harry without blushing. "They wanted me to tell you that they said they would make it up to you for being utter prats about you talking to me last spring, and they said to tell you that this is it."

"What is?"

"Mum didn't really want any of us to come," said Ginny. "She thought it was too far away, too close to the beginning of the school year, and she doesn't know Sirius. She likes Professor Lupin, and he nearly talked her around, but that article in the Daily Prophet- the one Hermione hated- Mum thinks Sirius threw you the wrong sort of party."

"Like a drunken orgy?" Harry asked, remembering Tonks' words.

Ginny giggled. "She didn't use those words, but I reckon that's what she meant. We told her what the party was really like but she didn't understand. She says that you're such a sweet boy, and it isn't right for you to be spending so much time with such a wild man."

"He's not wild!" said Harry, even though he wasn't sure whether that was true.

"I like him," said Ginny. "I like the way he listens to me when I talk to him and takes what I say seriously."

"He does do that," said Harry, slightly mollified that Ginny appreciated Sirius too.

"Anyway, Mum thinks he might be… touched… because of all that time he spent in Azkaban. She thought you should come to us like you always have instead of us coming to you. So she said she couldn't stop Hermione's parents from letting her go all over the world on her own- she didn't like that Hermione went to Bulgaria with Krum, either- but that we weren't going to go. That's when Fred and George said that if she'd let them go, they'd tell her where they got the money to start their business. Of course she went spare that they'd even try to bargain like that, and that's how she ended up letting Ron and me go. She barely noticed, really, she was so angry, and Dad said we'd better-"

The door flew open. "You've had enough time to tell him Fred's secret message," said Ron.

"I have, but Harry and I didn't want to listen to you and Hermione anymore."

"Harry hasn't heard anything Hermione and I said," Ron retorted.

Harry decided not to point out that he'd been able to hear Ron and Hermione all the way down the hall and asked instead what Ron wanted to do first.

From the sound of it, Ron wanted to do _everything_ first- and so did Hermione and Ginny. Tonks and Lupin had arrived, too, and Harry noticed that Lupin was watching Sirius carefully. He wondered if he ought to get Lupin alone and ask what they ought to do about Sirius, but Sirius loudly suggested that they start with a walk around the resort so everyone could get a better idea of what they most wanted to do.

And so the seven of them set out together, a strange group wending its way through the strange hot liquid air.

**_To be continued._ **

* * *


	59. The Other Ones

"Professor?" asked Harry quietly as the evening stretched on and Ron, Ginny, and Hermione began to look very sleepy after their long journey. "Could I have a word? Alone?"

Remus nodded, and he and Harry drifted away from the group. He could feel Dora's eyes on him- he could always feel Dora's eyes on him- and he signaled to her that they needed a moment of privacy but would be back soon. She nodded that she had understood.

At least she understood _something_ .

But Harry hadn't pulled him aside to discuss Dora. Of that, Remus was reasonably sure. When he asked Harry what was on his mind, Harry requested that Remus cast an anti-eavesdropping charm.

Curiouser and curiouser, he thought, with more than a little pride in the precautions Harry had decided to take before they chatted about… whatever it was that they were going to chat about. "That spell is more reliable if we aren't moving when I cast it," Remus told Harry. "Can we sit by the edge of the lagoon, there?"

"I've got a better place," Harry decided, and he led Remus through a barely-visible break in the foliage to a smaller, more private lagoon. "This is where I had my swimming lessons."

Remus looked around. It was quite beautiful, though almost _too_ quiet and isolated. If they had been in the middle of a magical war, he would have insisted that he and Harry stay in a more populated area where Death Eaters couldn't sneak up on them from behind. But as the approach of Death Eaters was most unlikely, he sat beside Harry and cast the spell.

"Is Sirius all right?" asked Harry the moment Remus had concealed his wand.

"Why do you ask?"

"Why are you answering a question with a question?"

Remus couldn't decide whether to laugh or tease Harry with another question, and so he did neither. "You've seen much more of Sirius than I have this summer. I spoke to him on the night of your birthday party and again this afternoon. That's all."

"Sorry, Professor," said Harry, and Remus immediately felt terrible. He knew well how moody Sirius could be; he could have guessed why Harry would go out of his way to have this conversation.

"I should be the one apologizing," said Remus. "And if it isn't too terribly awkward, please call me Remus when we aren't at school."

The expression on Harry's face implied that it most certainly would be too terribly awkward, thank you very much. Remus understood. He could just about wrap his mind around calling his colleagues _Minerva_ and _Filius_ , but he still addressed the Headmaster by his title despite having been given permission to call him _Albus_ \- and it had been decades since he'd been a student.

"There's no rush to do it," Remus told Harry. "In the other- in the place where I came from, you avoided addressing me directly for the better part of three years after I was no longer your professor. By the time you called me by my first name, you were a legal adult with the full weight of the resistance on your shoulders. But you didn't ask to speak to me privately about that."

"I wouldn't mind hearing about it," said Harry quickly.

"But first, Sirius. Has he done or said anything in particular to cause you concern?"

"No, he's…" Harry paused and thought about it. "It's what he hasn't said and done. All of a sudden he's been quieter, and he's not eating as much, and…" Harry trailed off. "I wouldn't have said anything, but last year on Halloween, he could have hurt himself, right? Apparating while he was drunk and everything. At Christmas he wouldn't Apparate with me just because I asked why he changed his mind about wanting me to live with him."

Remus winced. "He could have hurt himself. He didn't. Sirius has always…" The idea of explaining Sirius to Harry was ludicrous. Harry and Sirius had been made for each other, and Harry had always understood his godfather perfectly. Then there was the matter of Sirius' privacy. Sirius hadn't been pleased when Remus had told Harry about Sirius' death, and as Remus was the only one of the three of them who had lived through Sirius' death, he felt a certain ownership over that information.

"Sirius has always what?"

"Been prone to dark moods." There. He'd said it. It wasn't as if Harry didn't already know it. It wasn't as if Harry hadn't proven himself more than capable of handling almost any truth placed before him. "Your dad could maneuver him out of that state of mind when we were children, but woe be to anyone else who tried."

"He really misses my dad, doesn't he?"

"He does. He also misses you when you're gone. He loved Hogwarts when he was a student, and he wants you to love it, too, but as the time to say goodbye to you gets closer, he dreads not having you around all the time. He dreads the approach of Halloween for the same reasons."

"I can leave school and visit him on Halloween this year, can't I?"

"You will stay and enjoy the feast on Halloween," said Remus. "Sirius would not want it any other way, and you can ask him yourself if you must. But it wouldn't be out of line for you to check in on him with your mirror."

The expression on Harry's face told Remus that Harry would be doing exactly as he pleased on Halloween, and it pleased him to visit Sirius. Remus set the thought aside to deal with in two months' time.

"I don't want him to die again," said Harry.

"Nor do I. But I don't believe that we have to worry about that in the immediate future."

"The last time- the other me- there were things I could have done. I know you said it wasn't my fault, what happened in the Department of Mysteries, but if I had looked at my mirror-"

"You believed that you were protecting Sirius by not looking at the mirror, just as you believe now that you'll be protecting him if you sneak out of the castle on Halloween to visit him."

"Do you think I'm fated to do something that will kill him? Maybe no matter how time is changed, Sirius will always die because of me?"

"Sirius didn't die because of you last time," Remus repeated. "And no, I do not believe in fate. I don't believe in the prophecy and I don't believe that things must happen a certain way. If anything, I've worried that I've taken something from you by changing the past. Deprived you of the experiences that would have forged you into the man you're meant to be by interfering with the Triwizard Tournament and the Horcruxes and the Death Eaters."

"I'd rather be a lesser man and have Sirius and Cedric be alive," said Harry quickly.

Remus smiled. "And I suppose that that proves that there's no doubt that you are growing up to be a wise and kind man, just as you did last time."

"I don't like it when people say that you have to go through adversity to become a good person or whatever," said Harry softly, confidingly. "I think it's just an excuse to make people feel better when they don't want to do something about a problem, or when they can't. It's like someone saying that staying with the Dursleys taught me to be a better person because I know what it's like to have everyone hate me, so I'm nicer to other people now. No one ever made Ron or Hermione sleep in a cupboard when there were two empty bedrooms upstairs, and they're both good people. Even though their parents love them. I think that if Sirius being alive and making the Dursleys let me have as much to eat as Dudley gets ruins me somehow, maybe I wasn't that great to begin with."

"I think it may have been the other way round," said Remus with a heavy heart. "I think you may be so extraordinary that the Dursleys didn't affect you the way they would have affected someone else."

"That's no reason to make me stay with them," said Harry. "I mean, I know that the protection that came from my Mum's sacrifice is a reason for me to stay with them, but making me stay there because it would turn me into the kind of person who would want to defeat Voldemort? That's stupid. Ron wants to defeat Voldemort, and he has the best parents."

"I quite agree," said Remus. "It would have been better if you hadn't been left with the Dursleys. And Harry, if you do decide that you want to forfeit the last two years of your mother's protection-"

"I don't," said Harry. "I'll leave when I'm seventeen or when we kill Voldemort, whichever comes first. It's not so bad when Sirius is there, anyway. It's almost fun."

"I'm glad."

Harry looked sharply at Remus. "It was your idea for him to move in, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Remus cautiously, not sure why that was worthy of such a searching look.

"So if you knew that it wouldn't be so bad for me to be with the Dursleys if I had someone else, why didn't you ever come see me before you became my professor, Remus?"

The pointed use of his first name was a blow worthy of Lily.

"I regret that," Remus said. "I regret it, but I also think I made the best decision I could with the information I had."

"How?"

"It was absolute chaos the night your parents died. Families coming out of hiding. Wizards who had been under the Imperius Curse suddenly finding that they had been used to perform despicable acts. Above all, angry Death Eaters trying frantically to escape justice. You know, I believe, where that led for your friend Neville's parents."

"Yes," agreed Harry.

"I'm certain that Bellatrix Lestrange would rather have destroyed you if she had had the choice between you and the Longbottoms. Dumbledore made certain to hide you so that she would not have that option. Dumbledore wanted you to stay hidden from all the others like her. The Ministry wanted you to stay hidden from all the others like her. Everyone had suspected everyone else of horrible betrayals during the war, and no betrayal was more shocking than your godfather's apparent allegiance to Lord Voldemort. I was ill, alone, and penniless. I was not in a position to argue with the Ministry or with Dumbledore."

"But you could have figured out where I was. You knew my mum had one sister, and you knew I must be in the Muggle world somewhere. You didn't have to kidnap me or anything, but you could have… you could have been the nice neighbor or something."

"You're quite correct that I realized where you were hidden. But do you believe that Dumbledore wasn't watching to ensure that you did not receive unauthorized visitors from the magical world? Visitors who might wish you ill? Visitors who might be well-intentioned but who might nonetheless be capable of putting you in danger inadvertantly, perhaps by upsetting your aunt and uncle?"

"Was there some kind of mirror like the one Sirius gave me so he could watch the Dursleys?" Harry looked a bit revolted at the prospect, and Remus didn't blame him.

"Dumbledore did choose a neighbor for you. There's a woman named Arabella Figg who was in the Order of the Phoenix-"

"Mrs. Figg?" asked Harry in disbelief. "She's a witch?"

"She's a squib."

"And it was her job to spy on me?"

"Her job was to contact Dumbledore in case of an emergency. The members of the Order were hand-picked by Dumbledore not only for our skills and our willingness to die for the cause, but because we were particularly loyal to him. My loyalty to Dumbledore, for example, came from my extreme gratitude that he allowed me to attend school even though I was a werewolf. I was devoted to bringing about Voldemort's downfall. I still am. But I am loyal to Dumbledore on a personal level, and so is Arabella Figg- although I don't know why, precisely. I imagine he was kind to her despite her being a squib. That's unfortunately rare among wizards."

"So she would have thought it was an emergency if she saw you talking to me, and Dumbledore would have stopped you?"

"I don't know for certain. I don't claim to have tried it. But even if I had evaded Mrs. Figg, Harry, your aunt and uncle would not have welcomed me into your life. That house is their home, and regardless of extenuating circumstances they had a right to choose who interacted with the child they unexpectedly found themselves responsible for feeding and clothing. What standing did I have to challenge that? I'm of no blood relation to you. I'm not legally listed as your guardian, as Sirius is. You were too young to remember me; it wasn't as if I could claim to be building upon an existing relationship even if your aunt and uncle would have permitted it."

"But after I went to Hogwarts, those first two years…"

"I should have," Remus said. "I told myself that you wouldn't want to hear from some old, decrepit friend of the parents you didn't remember. I told myself that you were happy with your friends and your family and that a penniless, ill old man had no place interfering in your life. And a strange old man making uninvited contact with a child who has no memory of him-"

"You aren't that old," interrupted Harry, and Remus laughed.

"I would do it differently if I had it to do again," Remus said. "Not that I want to relive my life a third time," he added, in case any invisible forces beyond his comprehension were eavesdropping. He put the invisible forces out of his mind and focused all of his attention where it belonged: on the boy beside him. "I'm sorry, Harry. I know that an apology doesn't change anything, but I should have prioritized your well-being and I didn't. It didn't even occur to me that you might have been so unhappy with your relatives that you would have welcomed anything your parents' friend would have been able to offer. It should have."

Sirius and Dumbledore had both informed Remus in no uncertain terms that he had a blind spot because, no matter how much society as a whole disdained him, the people who had been meant to value him the most had always loved him. He had never felt their meaning as keenly as he did now.

"It's all right," said Harry awkwardly. "You didn't want to do anything to make things worse."

Remus could have told Harry that if Sirius really had been a Death Eater, Remus would have been guilty of allowing him to break into the castle to murder the Boy Who Lived. But he had no business asking Harry for absolution. (He thought of Lyall not asking Sirius to absolve him for the doubts he had had about the child Sirius had been. His father was a wise man more often than not.)

"I'll help you keep an eye on Sirius," he promised Harry, because Harry deserved better than to be told that everything was all right and he needn't worry.

"Thanks," said Harry, and something about his small, crooked smile made Remus think that he might have a chance of doing this history-changing thing properly after all.

* * *

"Where did Harry go?" Sirius asked Tonks.

"You've lost your famous godson?" she asked with a mock-sad shake of her head. Her long red hair- she'd decided to look like Ron and Ginny's older sister for purposes of escorting them halfway around the world- swung in a neat circle. "You need to be more careful, Sirius. Mum is going to scold you about this for sure."

"I imagine Anna needs a change from scolding you," Sirius shot back. "Where is he?"

"He wanted to talk to Remus and dragged him off in that direction." She gestured vaguely toward the lagoon where Harry's swimming lessons had taken place. "Should we go after them?"

Sirius shrugged. "If he wants to talk to Moony, he can talk to Moony."

Tonks glanced between Sirius and the plants that, presumably, concealed Harry and Remus. "You don't seem to be concerned."

Sirius shrugged again. "Some of us like and trust Remus, Nymphadora."

Her eyes narrowed. Despite the red hair and the changes she had made to the shape of her face, she looked like her mother in that moment. "I know he's your best mate-"

"James was my best friend," Sirius snapped with more venom than he'd meant to release. "The only best friend I will ever have."

He knew that he and Remus had shared things that James, who hadn't really had the chance to be a full-fledged adult, would never experience. He knew that he and Remus were unusually close. He knew that preserving a title for James meant absolutely nothing to James or to the universe.

It meant something to Sirius.

The loss of James was still a knife in his chest at the most unexpected of times. Harry's imminent return to school made it exponentially worse. When Harry was around, some of the noise in Sirius' head settled down. He was wanted and needed: godfather, friend, protector, tutor, confidante, thrower of parties, and provider of expensive trips. When Harry was gone, there was nothing to do but think about Halloween and how nothing was as it should be and it was his own fault.

Tonks glanced behind them surreptitiously and drew her wand. Sirius felt an anti-eavesdropping spell settle over them. He raised an eyebrow at his young cousin.

"You were angry with Remus when you first found out about the changing history thing, weren't you." Statement, not question. She already knew the answer.

Sirius nodded the confirmation she didn't need. "I was very angry."

"Are you still angry? Just a little bit?"

"Not at all," he said honestly. He wasn't certain whether he was surprised that he had come around to Remus' point of view so completely in the last year or whether he was surprised that Tonks hadn't realized as much.

"You've seen his memories, right? From the other time, with the other Tonks and the other Sirius?"

"Yes. I had to see them to try to stop them happening again."

"Don't you ever feel like you're an imitation? Some kind of replacement for another person? Someone he's manipulating into being what he thinks you should be?"

Sirius studied Tonks' face. She looked impossibly young and unsure, not at all like the fun-loving auror he knew her to be. "No," he told her. "I never feel like that. But Remus and I had a very long history before he did any of this. The way we met, the way we grew up together, the way we fought together, the way we misjudged and betrayed each other, the way we grieved by ourselves when the war ended, and the way we lost James. None of that is any different."

"But when you look at his memories, do you feel like you're seeing yourself? That man whose name was never cleared, that man who had to hide in Grimmauld Place? The man Bellatrix Lestrange killed? That other Sirius, he's not you."

"I'm afraid he is," said Sirius with a humorless chuckle. "I feel very, very close to him."

Tonks glared at the water in frustration.

"I know it's different for you," Sirius tried. "You didn't know Remus before he started playing Master of the Universe. But I don't believe he would ever try to change who you are. I don't think he could even if he wanted to- I don't think that's possible- but I don't think that's what he wants. Not remotely."

Her face was pale in the fading summer light. "In that case, I'm even more depressed."

"You're depressed?" asked Sirius. He fancied himself something of an expert on depression and he hadn't seen a trace of it in Tonks. "You've been laughing with Ginny all evening."

"Of course I'm depressed! I love him, but I don't want to be the person I'm destined to be with him. And you're just telling me all over again that that's who I am if I don't stay away from him."

"I'm not telling you anything. I couldn't. I don't even understand what you just said. I certainly don't think anyone who would decide to fall in love with Remus could be all that bad, considering he's not the easiest person in the world to love."

The flicker of rage that crossed her face almost made him laugh. "I'm not a- what do you take me for?"

"I don't mean the werewolf thing. I mean the self-pity, the compulsive need to have everyone like him-"

"Do _you_ even like him?"

"I adore him. I'm not the one who basically threatened to kill him if he ever hit on me. Not that I imagine you're entirely capable of stopping yourself. Being overly dramatic does run in the family."

"I'm not a Black. I'm a Tonks."

Sirius snorted. "If it were that easy to escape, I would have changed my name decades ago."

**_To be continued._ **


	60. The Scars

On their last day in Florida, Sirius made good on his threat to take Harry to Disney World. Harry and his friends chattered excitedly about this strange new adventure; Dora and Sirius were hardly less energetic and intrigued. Remus felt their delight washing over him in waves. It was good to see all of them looking so very happy.

He packed the moment away for the next time he had to cast a Patronus. (After spending years in the depths of misery because all of his happy memories had been tainted, he had developed a habit of making a particular note of it each time he felt truly, purely joyful. He'd never discussed it with Sirius, but he suspected that his friend did the same thing.)

And Sirius, now, was watching him.

"Well?" Remus questioned.

Sirius caught Dora's eye and exchanged an exasperated look with her. "You're right, he can't go out like that," Sirius said. "It's practically a violation of the International Statute of Secrecy."

Remus didn't know what either one of them was talking about. He glanced at himself in the mirror and didn't see anything wrong. "What are you suggesting?" he asked Dora. He was confused, but pleased that she was suggesting anything. She'd been nothing but polite for the past week, but her laughter had been saved for the teenagers and her earnestness had been saved for Sirius. He liked to feel her attention on him again, whatever the reason.

"You need to put on a short-sleeved shirt," she told him.

He wished that she had asked him for literally anything else.

"I think my scars would make us stand out more than we would prefer," he said as delicately as he could. Dora was made of stronger stuff than most, and she'd been properly prepared, but she had still recoiled when she'd first seen his bare arms and legs.

"You'll stand out more if you keep covered up like that when it's two million degrees outside and so humid that you need gills to breathe," said Dora. "People will look at your scars for a second and then look away. They'll stare if you dress like you're in Scotland in the winter."

"They'll attribute it to my being English."

"And is it really fair to the people of England for you to represent us this way?"

"It wouldn't be fair to the people of England for me to look like someone who- who-"

"Has scars?" she asked. "If anyone is rude enough to ask, we'll tell them you were in a fire. Cursed scars don't look that different from burn scars."

The half-pleading tone in her voice made his stomach turn over uncomfortably. He remembered it well from the future-past. She'd always insisted that their romantic partnership, their marriage, and their family could thrive even in a world that viewed him as a monster. He'd always thought that she was ignoring his perfectly valid concerns out of youthful naïveté.

He'd forgotten how annoying it was.

"Cursed scars do not look like burn scars," he told her. "They take the Statute of Secrecy very seriously in the United States, and any Muggle- or No-Maj- who looks at me will know that-"

"That magic exists?" He stiffened. It wasn't Dora who had answered. It was Harry. He hadn't even realized that Harry and his friends had come back into the room. As much as he hadn't wanted to argue with Dora, he wanted even less to argue with Harry.

Harry lounged against the bed, green eyes guarded behind his glasses. "I went to a Muggle primary school for six years, and no one ever said 'look at that scar on his forehead, there must be a whole parallel society where they fly around on broomsticks and brew stuff in cauldrons."

"To be fair, he went to primary school with a lot of duffers," said Ron, and Remus wasn't sure if Ron was trying to support him or just winding up Harry.

"You could just try wearing normal clothes in front of us first," suggested Ginny. "If any of us faint in horror, you'll know that you'd better cover up."

He supposed she'd outgrown her shyness right around the time she'd turned fourteen the first time around, too.

It felt much too much like the night in the Hospital Wing. The night Dumbledore had died. The night Harry had revealed that Severus Snape had put a target on the Potters' backs. The night that Bill Weasley had been mauled beyond recognition. The night that half the Order had taken time out from trying to save the world to weigh in on Remus' romantic life and ignore the realities of living as a werewolf.

He'd wanted to do better this time. He'd taken every precaution. It hadn't been enough.

"Thank you, Ginny," said Remus.

"You're welcome, Professor," she said sunnily.

He sighed. He wasn't ready to walk around half-dressed in public, but he supposed that he could at least take the initiative to diffuse one of the secrets that thickened the air. "Ginny, sit down, please."

She obediently settled herself on the bed next to Harry, face aglow with interest and seemingly not at all concerned with what Remus was about to tell her.

"How much did you overhear?" he asked.

"Just that you have a bunch of scars so you want to dress like it's Scotland in the winter."

"Before I tell you this, I want you to be aware that you will never be alone with me while we're here, or when you're back at Hogwarts."

"All right," she said, looking at him as if he had suddenly grown three heads.

"And I'm going to ask you not to share this secret with anyone who is not on this trip. I shall not, of course, compel you."

"I'll compel you," said Ron. "I'll smother you in your sleep if you get us stuck with another Gilderoy Lockhart."

"You're not making any sense," said Ginny to Ron. "Not that that's abnormal, mind you. I just thought I'd mention it."

Remus rolled up one of his sleeves. Every one of the children gasped, even Harry, which Remus found mildly gratifying. It was nice to be reminded that he wasn't crazy: his uncovered skin was, in fact, a revolting sight.

"What happened?" asked Ginny.

"These are scars from the teeth and claws of a werewolf. They're cursed wounds, so they can't be healed."

"You fought a werewolf?"

"In a way. I _am_ a werewolf. I was bitten when I was four years old, long before the invention of Wolfsbane Potion. In order to keep me from biting other people, first my parents and then my teachers were forced to lock me up on nights of the full moon. It is in a werewolf's nature to attack, and since I was separated from other people, I bit and scratched myself."

Ginny shrugged. "I suppose that explains why you're ill about once a month and your lesson on werewolves was the most boring one all last year."

She was awfully calm. Even Dora had been more worried. "Did you already suspect?" he asked her.

"The rumor I heard was that you have a blood curse that someone hexed you with during the war against You-Know-Who. This isn't that different."

"And now that you know the truth?" he prompted.

Another shrug. "I'm good at keeping secrets."

Dora clapped her hands. "Well, now that that's settled you can go downstairs to the shop and buy a short-sleeved shirt at least."

Sirius, who had been watching carefully from the back of the room, pointed at Hermione. "You go with him. Make sure he does it. Just charge it to the room. Buy yourself whatever you want, and charge that to the room, too. Buy yourself two things if you can get him to buy one of the shirts with the goofy dog on them."

Hermione nodded briskly, and so Remus found himself shopping for clothes with a determined teenage escort.

"How has your summer been, Hermione?" he asked, hoping to restore some semblance of normalcy to the whole ridiculous situation.

"I finished my homework first thing," she began. "I went to visit Viktor for a week last month. The parks in Bulgaria are really beautiful. I wish I'd known earlier that we were coming here or I would have read more about it. It's hard to believe that Walt Disney wasn't a wizard, and did you know…"

He listened with interest to her recitation. It was hard not to appreciate Hermione's intellectual curiosity and thoroughness.

In the store, he let her persuade him to buy the dog shirt (was this Goofy fellow really a dog?) so she could justify the second book she wanted, and so Sirius would be amused.

Ever since Harry and Dora (not to mention Dumbledore and Snape) had learned the truth about the life he'd been leading for the past two years, he had felt exposed all the time. He might as well add literal exposure to the metaphorical sort.

* * *

They took a boat to the amusement park. There were few other people along for the ride, and all of them seemed to be minding their own business. Remus noticed that despite the heat, one of them was wearing a shirt that covered his arms. He was inclined to point it out to Dora- after all, Muggles couldn't protect themselves from a sunburn with a simple charm, so there was a perfectly valid reason that they might choose not to expose their skin- but he stopped himself. There was no use in choosing to argue now when he hadn't bothered to argue before.

And he rather liked the feeling of the sun and air on his arms. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been outside without covering himself. That wasn't terribly out of the ordinary for a wizard; wizards wore robes, and robes covered everything. He hadn't even thought about it for years. It hadn't felt like a choice since childhood, when swimming in the Black Lake with all of his classmates had been very much not an option. (Swimming in the lake near James' parents' property with all of the Marauders around to help in the unlikely event that anyone else came within miles of them had been fine. It was one of his fondest memories.)

The first incident occurred when they joined a crowd of people pushing their way through the gates. A child demanded to know what was wrong with him; Remus replied that he had been burned in a fire; and the child's mother shushed her. Over the next few hours, several other children stared and a number of adults flinched. Hermione was kind enough to glare at the one man who dared to point at him.

Harry and Ginny dashed around attempting to try every thrill ride that mimicked flight or jangled their brains. Sirius and Dora, too, wanted to do anything that gave them an excuse to scream or take a risk- real or pretended.

Hermione and Ron were less impressed. Hermione announced that she didn't enjoy feeling as if she were about to die and that she only flew through the air or fought dark wizards when she absolutely had to. Ron at first tried to keep pace with Harry and Ginny, but slowly began spending more and more time wandering away from the rides with Hermione, muttering about Muggle nutters under his breath.

Remus didn't really care whether he rode the roller coasters or not. He agreed to ride each time Sirius pestered him; he agreed to skip the ride each time Hermione pointed to some decoration and wanted to speculate about how Muggles had recreated magic so well (or poorly).

Late in the afternoon, Hermione decided that she did want to ride the roller coaster rising above them because she wanted to see how accurately it portrayed the yeti who lived at Mount Everest. Ron told her that she had never seen the yeti who lived there, or any yeti at all, so she couldn't possibly make a comparison. Hermione ignored Ron completely, and Ron raced to catch up with Harry, asking Harry if they could make sure to sit in the very front row.

Ron and Harry did, as it happened, manage to claim the front row. Ginny and Sirius climbed in behind them, laughing as they did. Dora reached out to Hermione, who looked slightly green, and helped her into the next row.

That left Remus alone in the fourth row of their mock train car. He didn't think much of it; a group of three teenagers were ushered in to join them. Two would sit in the last row; one would sit beside Remus.

She looked at him and screamed. "I'm not riding with him! He's probably contagious- look at-"

Remus stepped out of the train.

They were not going to have a breach of the International Statute of Secrecy because of him.

They most especially were not going to have a breach of the International Statute of Secrecy because of him on the last day of Harry's summer holiday.

They were not going to have a breach of the International Statute of Secrecy a week before Hogwarts started its new term and Remus would have to see Dumbledore and Snape on a daily basis- if he wasn't asked to step down for having a hand in a second international incident in less than a year. And Dora was here, too, he realized; it wouldn't do for her to annoy MACUSA so soon after annoying the magical governments of Denmark and Serbia by killing Igor Karkaroff.

Dora somehow (Remus suspected that "somehow" was in fact "non-verbal magic") disentangled herself from the ride's safety bar and jumped out of the train as it started to move. She landed next to Remus, her face flushed and her hair even redder than it had been to start the day.

The train attendant- what on earth were the employees around here called?- rounded on the two of them. Remus wasn't certain whether she was going to scold them for leaving the train without permission or whether she was going to apologize for the girl's screaming (which truthfully hadn't been at all hurtful to someone who had been thrown out of homes and jobs for being a werewolf). He decided not to wait and took Dora by the arm. "We'll leave," he said hastily.

"Please don't," said the train attendant. "We'll put the two of you on the next train, right in front."

"Thank you," said Dora, suddenly sweetness and light and squeezing Remus' arm tightly. "They're only burn scars," she added in a not-unfriendly tone.

The train attendant nodded and subtly directed her gaze to a child in a wheelchair who was approaching with his family. "We do not want to send the message that anyone isn't welcome," she whispered. That, more than any curiosity about the ride, made him smile and thank her.

When the next train arrived, he stepped into it, still holding onto Dora's hand. The bar fell over them and he smiled at the idea of being trapped with her.

"If I'm going to be mauled by a yeti, I'm glad it will be with you," he murmured in her ear.

She smiled and his heart jumped as the train lurched upward on squealing wheels.

Fake birds uttered fake chirps of fear as a fake snow-covered mountain rose before them.

The artistry was very well done, of course; Filius Flitwick's own charmwork could not have made much of an improvement.

But everything felt terribly fake next to Dora, who was so very real.

Dora screamed- playing along, Remus knew, not remotely frightened- as the train moved up and down. The track in front of them ended in a twisted mass of metal; even Remus, who fancied himself not afraid of any sort of physical danger, gasped. Dora snickered next to him as the train flew backwards and was confronted with the yeti.

"Your mother was a troll!" Dora yelled.

Remus laughed, and was still laughing when the ride reached its endpoint.

The others were awaiting them just beyond the gate.

"Hermione got sick all over the twat who complained about you," said Ron gleefully. "It was great."

Remus looked swiftly to Hermione, but she showed no sign of lingering ill effects. If anything, she had a hard, proud look to her face.

Remus decided not to investigate further, but rather to be pleased that he and Hermione Granger were on the same side. "So, Hermione," he asked, "How much better do you think you could have done with magic?"

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "The scenery was very detailed, wasn't it?"

And for the next two hours, they all pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Perhaps nothing out of the ordinary _had_ happened.

* * *

In the evening, as they awaited a light show, Dora appeared at his side with a bag in her hand. "For you," she said. "This is as close as I'll get to saying I was wrong."

He looked into the bag and saw a lightweight long-sleeved shirt.

"You shouldn't have to put anyone at ease if you don't want to," Dora continued. "And if you'd rather be in Scotland in the winter, that's your business."

Even though she had taken on the Weasley bone structure as well as the Weasley hair for the week, her face was still heart-shaped and her eyes were still uniquely hers as she looked up at him.

The way she looked at him, too, was unchanged. She'd looked at him that way during their too-short marriage. She'd looked at him that way during their too-short springtime romance. She'd looked at him as if she admired him and enjoyed him and wanted to protect him.

"Am I still forbidden to suggest anything remotely romantic?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," she said just as quietly.

"You held my hand," he pointed out.

"We were in danger from a pretend yeti."

"You bought me a present."

"As an apology for nearly fucking up your day."

"You jumped out of a moving train for me."

"Aurors are trained to protect. It's an instinct by now."

"Your feelings for me are clearly unchanged," he said, almost dizzy with the boldness of the declaration.

"If we're going to have this discussion, we're going to have it at the hotel."

So _he_ was pushing her to admit her feelings, and _she_ was asking for privacy.

For the first time in a long time, Remus wondered if he was caught in some strange mirror-like hallucination between life and death. This couldn't be real.

But she was real. If she wasn't real, he would know, as he'd known when the apparition of Hope had appeared to him.

He enjoyed Dora's realness as they watched the light show and returned to the boat and the hotel. In the hotel lobby, Remus asked Sirius whether he and the teenagers would mind waiting ten minutes to come upstairs to the rooms.

"Ten minutes?" asked Sirius. "Surely you can do better than-"

"I will feed you to the flamingos outside if you finish that sentence."

Remus watched as Sirius thought of at least two dozen filthy retorts, decided not to share any of them, and promised that he most certainly would not interrupt them before the ten minutes were up unless it was an emergency.

Remus might have believed Sirius if Sirius hadn't sealed the promise with a deep bow.

* * *

As soon as Remus and Dora stepped into the room, the telephone rang. They glanced at each other with a complete lack of surprise before Dora answered.

"Is this the manager? I would like to report that Mr. Lupin has been eaten by a flamingo," she said.

"That is most disappointing," crackled the voice against Dora's ear. "It is so difficult to find good Defense professors, and I was so hoping to speak to him."

It wasn't Sirius.

It was Albus Dumbledore.

Dora passed the telephone to Remus.

"Headmaster," said Remus as courteously as he could manage.

"Remus! I'm delighted to hear that you have made such a complete recovery."

"Fortunately, the flamingo decided that I was not pink enough," said Remus.

"Regardless of what color you may be, I would like to see you tomorrow. The new term is starting soon and we have matters to discuss."

"Certainly," said Remus. "I will see you tomorrow."

"Wonderful," said Dumbledore, and his voice crackled away as suddenly as it had come. Remus returned the telephone to its resting place.

"D'you think he was proving that he could find us when we didn't tell him where we were going?" asked Dora, all Auror-style paranoia. Remus decided not to be distracted by how attractive paranoia looked on her.

"It's possible," he admitted. "But how difficult would it be to find us? We didn't attempt to hide. One question to Molly Weasley about where her two youngest children are, and he'd have everything he needed to contact us."

"That's true," said Dora. She squared her shoulders and stood up straighter. "I don't suppose there's any reason to be concerned about whether Dumbledore wants to remind us that he's the most powerful man who ever lived, let alone whether he knows where we are."

"Then why is it on your mind?" asked Remus.

She settled into a cross-legged position on one of the beds. "What you told me about what happened in your past has been a lot to take in," she said. "It makes me look at everything differently. The possibility of avoiding a war, of sparing almost everyone I care about from pain… it's why I became an Auror in the first place. It makes me wonder how much everyone else has changed as a result of what you've done, because I know how much I've changed. Sirius and I discussed this the other day while you were talking to Harry. Sirius says he's the same person he was in your memories. But I'm not the same person I was in your memories. I don't want to be her. I don't want you to turn me into her. I want to be myself. I don't want anyone to have that kind of control over me."

"I would never try to turn you into someone you're not. I made certain that every step we took in our relationship was at your suggestion. You initiated the first kiss. You wanted us to socialize outside of Hogwarts. You made it abundantly clear that you wanted…"

She shook her head in frustration. "That's not what I'm talking about. I liked you then and I like you now. Fine. We connect. But I'm not going to lose myself to you. I'm not going to let myself love anyone so much that I'm not myself anymore."

He had to admit that he couldn't imagine the woman he'd fallen in love with before his death saying anything of the kind. "I can't claim that love doesn't change someone," he said honestly. "Every time I've loved someone, it's changed me. Perhaps you most of all. You and Te-"

Teddy's name was halfway out of his mouth before he stopped himself. He couldn't talk about Teddy now. He couldn't stand the thought of Teddy's mother not caring whether Teddy existed or not; no more could he stand the thought of Dora believing that he was somehow trying to groom her into a person who could be a mother to their son.

It was too late, of course. Dora sat up even straighter. "Me and _who_ ?" she asked dangerously.

There was no point in lying. He wanted all of his ersatz family to be able to live in a world with fewer secrets, not more. "Teddy," he said hoarsely. The name hurt in his throat, a small price to pay for the way he had traded away his child's life. "We had a son. He was born a few months after your father died. We named him Teddy."

She slumped, her face twisting with a dozen emotions, before she regrouped and sat up straight again. "No wonder you're so desperate to pretend that I'm her," she said, her voice more pitying than outraged. "You want your son back and I'm the only person who can give him to you."

"I'm not pretending anything!" he snapped. "And I certainly would love you whether we ever had a child or not! I didn't want Teddy, by the way. I thought that he would inherit the werewolf curse and rip you open from the inside at the first full moon. I thought that it would damn you forever to be the mother of a werewolf, just as it damned my mother! I asked you to end the pregnancy and you refused. You were disgusted that I even suggested it. For that first week, every time we saw a child you whispered in my ear that perhaps we should murder him because he might become a werewolf, what with Fenrir Greyback being on the loose. I was frustrated that you wouldn't take my concerns seriously and I was so convinced that your connection to me would be your downfall that I- I walked out on you while you were pregnant. Only for the few hours that it took me to come to my senses. After that- well, it wasn't always easy but we were as happy as it is possible to be when you're in the middle of a war, the government has fallen, your friends are dying, and your photograph is plastered on Undesirable posters all over Diagon Alley."

"How far up the Undesirable list did we get before it was over?" asked Dora in such a flat voice that Remus had no idea what she was thinking.

"Five," he told her in just as flat a voice. "Harry was always number one, supposedly for his involvement in killing Dumbledore. Hermione was next because she helped Harry run, and of course it infuriated them that a Muggle-born witch could be quite so clever. For most of that year, Voldemort's Ministry thought Ron was ill with spattergroit, but once they began to suspect otherwise, he was third. You met Lee Jordan when you were helping with my sixth years last term? He had an underground radio show called Potterwatch. Once the Ministry had wind of that, he was four. So the unregistered werewolf and the Auror married to him were pushed all the way down to five and six."

"I can't have done much good as an Auror if I was pregnant and in hiding," she said.

"You did more than most."

"I want to do more this time," she said earnestly. A tiny part of him wanted to scold her for having a death wish.

"There isn't going to be a this time," he told her. "And you have already helped protect Harry and teach students how to protect themselves."

"It's not enough." She uncrossed her legs and jumped to her feet to pace aimlessly about the room. "It's never going to be enough."

He wasn't sure what she meant.

He wasn't sure whether she knew what she meant, either.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note : I wondered whether I would be called out for the Expedition Everest ride being an anachronism (it opened in 2006). The callout came six hours after I posted this chapter, so I'll explain myself.
> 
> It was a conscious choice on my part because I thought the witches and wizards would enjoy a ride centered around a rampaging yeti. As such, I ignored the timing even though I'm normally careful to make the pop culture references in this fic 90s-appropriate. If you must have an in-universe explanation, I blame it on the butterfly effect. Something Remus changed caused a chain reaction that led to Disney opening the ride nine years early. So there. Don't play with time if you aren't prepared for it to affect your favorite roller coasters.


	61. The Headmaster

The next day was a blur of double-checking Portkeys, Apparition points, and Floo connections. Harry made plans to reconvene with Ron and Hermione in Diagon Alley that afternoon before returning with Remus and Sirius to the house in Hogsmeade. Harry's fifth-year letter was propped on the kitchen table.

"Congratulations on not being made prefect," said Sirius to Harry.

"This doesn't preclude you from being Head Boy if that's something you want," added Remus, remembering anew Harry's sullen reaction to Dumbledore's perceived lack of faith the first time that this had happened.

"Why would he want that?" asked Sirius more harshly than Remus thought was strictly necessary.

"His father did," Remus pointed out.

Sirius rolled his eyes. "James wanted to be where Lily was."

"James wanted to save the world, one firstie at a time."

"With Lily."

"Yes, with Lily."

Harry watched their debate without comment.

"In any event, Harry, I believe that Dumbledore decided not to make you a prefect because he believes that you will be under enough pressure helping us save the world. I don't know that for a fact, of course, because he hasn't shared his reasoning with me. Would you like me to ask him?"

"No," said Harry with a shake of his head.

Sirius looked even more exasperated. "Not everyone cares about shiny badges, Professor Moony. Not even people whose parents were prefects."

Remus had never bothered to consider whether Sirius' own parents had been prefects, and now was not a good time to ask.

Sirius shifted his attention to Harry and away from any discussion of prefects. "Let's plan to get to Diagon Alley about an hour before you meet Hermione and Ron. You need new robes."

"I had new robes last year," said Harry.

"You've grown since then," Sirius pointed out reasonably enough.

And Remus forgot all about prefects, too, as nice as it was to see Sirius and Harry having a completely ordinary discussion about a completely ordinary shopping trip. He gathered up his lesson plans and prepared to walk to Hogwarts.

"Have fun in Diagon Alley," he told Harry.

Harry gave Remus a look that seemed more thoughtful than the occasion warranted. "Thank you for offering to talk to Dumbledore," he said. "If I decide I want to know I'll ask him myself. But if it's Ron who's been made prefect, I don't want to act like I think he didn't deserve it."

"Very wise of you," said Remus. "It was Ron the last time, and I expect that it will be this time. I won't say anything to Dumbledore because you've asked me not to, but he may bring it up himself. He saw my memories and he knows that that decision contributed to a lack of trust between the two of you."

"Things were different then." Harry watched his godfather out of the corner of his eye, as if the mere thought of ragged curtains and stone archways might make Sirius disappear. (Remus knew the feeling.)

"Yes," Remus agreed, not certain whether he was trying to reassure himself or Harry. "Things were very different then."

* * *

There was discussion of neither prefects nor lesson plans when Remus arrived at Dumbledore's office. Instead, Dumbledore wordlessly deposited a small golden cup with two finely-wrought handles on the desk in front of Remus. A few jewels glistened on the handles, but it was the badger engraved on the side that let Remus know, with a mix of delight and terror, that this cup was the creation of Helga Hufflepuff.

"Hepzibah Smith was a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff," said Dumbledore without preamble, as if he had ascertained that Remus knew that he was looking at a yet another priceless artifact defiled by Lord Voldemort. "Or perhaps she merely claimed to be a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff. The genealogical records from the tenth century are sadly lacking. What we know for certain as that she was wealthy enough to be an avid collector of magical antiquities. Her two most prized possessions were Helga Hufflepuff's cup and Salazar Slytherin's locket."

"Do you know what became of the locket?" Remus asked.

"Not yet," said Dumbledore. "Do be patient and appreciate how very impressive it is that I have recovered Helga Hufflepuff's cup so soon after you confirmed to me that there was a need."

"Yes, Headmaster," said Remus with a smile.

"When Hepzibah Smith had reached a significant age, she befriended a handsome young wizard named Tom Riddle. She was flattered by his attentions and showed him her greatest treasures. Two days later, she died from a little-known poison. Her house-elf claimed that she confused the poison with sugar, but, as you know, memories are very tricky things and can be altered by a skilled wizard."

Remus nodded.

"The cup disappeared, and as you were able to speculate that something of interest was hidden in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts…" Dumbledore rolled the cup from one hand to the other. "The cup seems to have reappeared."

"Do I want to know how you removed the cup from Gringotts?" Remus asked.

"Do you?" repeated Dumbledore. "I would have concerns about any professor of mine who was not curious enough to wonder how I removed a valuable artifact from a vault not my own. As it happens, I shall not tell you the specifics, but I shall remind you that goblins have a view of ownership that does not align perfectly with wizards' views of ownership. They believe that the creator of an object is forever the rightful owner. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs. They abhor wizards' habit of passing goblin-made silver from one generation to the next. They consider it little better than theft."

Remus, who had never been in danger of being rich enough to own anything made from goblin silver, had been completely unaware of goblin beliefs on the matter.

"Was there some sort of a trade?"

"Goblins do take the security of the vaults most seriously," said Dumbledore tightly, and Remus knew without asking that he had heard all he was going to hear.

He didn't care, anyway, whether Dumbledore had bribed or reasoned or traded or called in a favor or used the Imperius curse.

He cared that another Horcrux had been found, and that Harry hadn't had to risk his life and the stability of the wizard-goblin alliance by breaking into Gringotts and stealing a dragon.

"The cup is beautiful," Remus said instead of sharing his more relevant thoughts. "Powerful, too, I would imagine. I'm afraid I haven't made myself familiar with its lore." He should have, he realized now. He should have done more research; if he had, perhaps they would have found all of the Horcruxes by now and Harry would be free of the burdens he had never deserved.

"It was said to have many powers," said Dumbledore, always a willing teacher to a willing student. "Water drunk from the cup would become a powerful elixir. If one was starving, the cup could make any food plentiful, nourishing, and delicious. The cup's only purpose was to promote health and healing. It seems particularly heinous to use such an object as Lord Voldemort did."

Remus nodded in agreement. It was, indeed, heinous.

"Would you like to be the one to destroy it?" Dumbledore pointed to the sword in the wall. "We allowed Severus the pleasure with Ravenclaw's diadem, and I felt it best to destroy the ring before Sirius decided that he trusted me so little that he took it away again."

Dumbledore looked somewhat amused by the memory of Sirius placing the ring on the desk and then snatching it away as soon as the deed was done. Remus, though, almost wanted to apologize for Sirius' casual dislike of Dumbledore. He ignored the urge. Sirius was an adult who was allowed to have his own opinions- as long as those opinions didn't put any of the people they loved in danger.

Remus also almost wanted to refuse to destroy the Horcrux. Hufflepuff's cup, no doubt, would have served anyone in need; Gryffindor's sword chose who would wield it.

And Remus had always, always been the most cowardly of Gryffindors. As a student, he hadn't told his friends when their pranks had gone too far. As a teacher, he hadn't told the Headmaster how the most famous escaped prisoner in the history of Azkaban had snuck into the castle. As a father, he had very nearly left his wife and son behind. His physical bravery (no one could complain about his willingness to fight dark wizards and creatures) and whatever bravery came with trying to exist as a werewolf in a world in which werewolves weren't meant to exist paled in comparison.

But Dumbledore was waiting, and the sword was on the wall, and Remus had no real choice put to take it in hand and bring it down on top of the cup.

The cup split in two. There was same sickening wave of green-black smoke Remus remembered from the destruction of the diadem and the ring; underneath it was an odd smell of some sort of burned dessert.

Remus returned the sword to the wall and tried to look as nonchalant about it all as Snape had.

With a flick of his wand, Dumbledore locked the pieces in a box and locked the box in a cabinet.

"That's four," said Remus needlessly. "The diary, the diadem, the ring, and the cup. We need two more, one of which is almost certainly Slytherin's locket."

"My belief is that we only need Sytherin's locket," said Dumbledore quietly. A combination of joy and dread ran down Remus' spine. Joy because they had made more progress than he had realized. Dread because they were closer to the moment that he should never, never have allowed Harry to relive: the moment when Harry himself submitted to Voldemort's Avada Kedavra to remove the Horcrux attached to his own soul.

"You don't believe he wanted to split his soul into seven parts?" Remus asked.

"I would like more confirmation that that was his plan, yes. But what I strongly suspect is that he intended to make his final Horcrux on the night he murdered the Potters, and that the fragment of Voldemort's soul attached to Harry is the seventh piece, not the eighth, accidental as the process of creating it may have been."

"Do you have a plan to get the confirmation you need?"

"The beginnings of one. Let us not discuss it now. We have a staff meeting to attend."

Remus nodded and clutched his lesson plans like a lifeline.

"Don't look so grim, Remus," said Dumbledore kindly. "Today you destroyed an unspeakably dangerous object and your actions have allowed for the possibility that Harry Potter will live a long and happy life. It's more than I ever expected."

It might have been more than Dumbledore had ever expected, but to Remus it was a reminder that Harry had, in fact, survived this once, and that Remus had been the one to ask him to do it all over again. Sirius' initial fury and Dora's confused distaste were less punishment than Remus deserved.

And Teddy…

He couldn't think of Teddy now. He had to be prepared to chat with Professor Flitwick about the coordination of the Defense and Charms curriculum for the NEWT-level students.

* * *

The staff room was already full when Dumbledore walked in with Remus at his side. Remus usually chose one of the hard, straight-back chairs close to the center of the room. Today, though, those chairs were occupied and his only option was a low, cozy armchair in the far corner beside Severus Snape.

Severus didn't ordinarily choose the corner during staff meetings; most often, Minerva sat at Dumbledore's right and Severus at his left. Perhaps Severus had been working in the corner for hours (from the looks of the rolls of parchment at his feet, it was possible) and hadn't bothered to get up and take his place when the others had begun to arrive.

Remus smiled and whispered his hellos to his colleagues as he sat down. Severus pretended that Remus didn't exist. Remus didn't mind very much.

"I have two very important announcements which should make you all very happy," Dumbledore began. "The first is that this year there will be no dementors on school grounds, which I'm sure we will find a vast improvement over our experience two years ago. The second is that this year there will be no international tournament, and therefore no former Death Eaters in the form of headmasters roaming the castle."

There was a general murmur of approval, and a distinct sense that everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"We will not, however, be entirely free of the Ministry of Magic's interest this year."

Eyes began to meet in silent, nervous speculation. Hogwarts was never entirely free of the Ministry's interest; it was, after all, a school. More often than not, though, the Ministry and the public alike trusted Dumbledore to run Hogwarts as he saw fit. Everyone had understood about the extenuating circumstances caused by a prison break and an international event. No one seemed to know of any extenuating circumstances this year.

"The Minister of Magic has delegated a Senior Understudy to evaluate Hogwarts this year. She will be present at the Opening Feast. She intends to interview students and observe your classes throughout the term."

There were a few whisperings. Some of the professors appeared to be annoyed or offended. None seemed to share Remus' absolute horror.

"Scared that she'll report your complete lack of qualifications for your post to the Minister?" asked Severus under his breath.

"Feel free to share your concerns with her, Severus," murmured Remus as mildly as he could. "But I daresay you'll manage to like her even less than you like me."

"That," said Severus, "is not possible."

"Severus and Remus? Would you care to share your observations with the rest of us?" asked Dumbledore.

In the midst of his disappointment and fear (Severus wasn't wrong- Remus _was_ afraid), Remus felt a burst of happy nostalgia. A humorous reprimand for speaking out of turn reminded him of his schoolboy years, and he had loved his schoolboy years.

For a moment, he missed James terribly.

"Severus and I were wondering if this investigation was prompted by the Karkaroff matter," said Remus smoothly, although he had no idea whether Severus was wondering anything of the kind.

"Indirectly, I imagine that it was," said Dumbledore courteously.

"Isn't Dolores Umbridge rather busy drafting legislation to protect human beings from werwolves?" asked Severus. He kept all scorn and suggestion that he was referring to the werewolf sitting a wandlength from his knee out of his voice. Remus was almost impressed.

"Yes," said Dumbledore, and the general feeling of disapproval was gratifying to Remus. "She believes that she can craft legislation and evaluate Hogwarts at the same time. We will, of course, cooperate in any way possible. Are there further questions?"

There were none, and the discussion turned to the seventh years (an unusually talented class), the fifth years (an unusually disobedient class), the Quidditch Cup (everyone had missed it desperately during the previous year), and the upcoming Sorting (if you insist on placing wagers, do be subtle about it).

Remus was glad when it was over. He begged off of discussing the NEWT students with Professor Flitwick, who sympathetically agreed. "It will be fine," he said.

Remus wished that he could believe that.

* * *

Remus arrived back at the cottage ten minutes before Harry and Sirius. They presented him with a chocolate-mint flavored concoction, courtesy of Florean Fortescue, and the next hour passed pleasantly enough as Harry rearranged new school supplies in his trunk: quills and ink and parchment along with books and, of course, the latest innovations in broom care products. Harry eyed these last with pure delight.

"Harry," said Remus. His voice was raspier than he'd wanted it to be. It was raspier than it ought to have been after the ice cream.

Harry turned to look at him.

"I know that Quidditch means a great deal to you."

"You're not going to tell him that his OWLs are more important, are you?" injected Sirius irritably.

"Harry already knows that." Sirius made a face. Remus ignored him. "I wanted to tell him that there will be an Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic at Hogwarts this year, and that he ought to stay away from her as much as possible lest he lose the right to fly."

"Umbridge is going to be there?" asked Sirius sharply.

"Yes."

"But she couldn't get herself appointed Defense professor. Could she?"

"No." Remus shook his head. "Not yet."

"Who is Umbridge?" Harry wanted to know. "Does she want you to get sacked?"

"More than she realizes," said Remus. "She hates werewolves. I shan't take it personally, though, as she also hates giants, centaurs, merfolk, goblins, Muggles, and half-bloods, despite being a half-blood herself. She denies that, of course. Pretends her mother wasn't a Muggle. And do not bring it up, Harry. Do not tell her that you know that she isn't a pureblood. Do it as a special favor to me if you won't do it out of self-preservation."

"Is she going to try to kill me?"

"No," said Remus. "No, killing is not to her taste. She prefers humiliation and subjugation, and she needs lesser mortals alive for that. Why kill you when she can systematically take away everything that makes your life pleasurable, even bearable? Why kill you when she can drive you further and further into helplessness and isolation? Why kill you when she can congratulate herself as your hope gives way to despair?"

"Remus doesn't like her," said Sirius helpfully.

"Do _you_ like her?" Harry asked Sirius.

"I despise her, but I despise a lot of people. Remus pretty much reserves this level of loathing for Dolores Umbridge. Entertaining, isn't it?"

Remus didn't know whether to be amused or annoyed and settled for being neither.

"Harry, I generally don't want to give you a lot of details about what happened to you… before… because I don't want to hinder your ability to grow and find your own way. But when she was your Defense professor- she briefly managed to become Headmistress- she did far worse things than ban you from Quidditch. She stopped you communicating with Sirius. She forbade you to study Defense on your own after she declined to teach it. She- I don't suppose you've heard of a blood quill?"

"You write with your own blood?" guessed Harry.

"It's more painful than you would expect. She left you with a scar across your hand. It read _I must not tell lies_ . If she tries to hurt you physically, we can stop her this time. Sirius will pull you out of school if it comes to that." Remus looked to Sirius for confirmation and received it with a nod.

"Was I telling lies?" asked Harry, more interested in his shadow-self than in whether Sirius would remove him from school.

"No," said Remus shortly. "You were not."

"Does Dumbledore know all of this?"

"He does."

"Then why would he let her come to the school? What's she meant to be doing?"

"My guess- and this is only a guess-is that Dumbledore thinks it will stoke Minister Fudge's paranoia if he refuses entrance to Fudge's chosen representative. You know that Fudge has always been afraid that Dumbledore wants to be Minister of Magic and has been biding his time before taking over?"

"Yes."

"As to what she's meant to be doing, she's meant to be evaluating the professors and the school. When she realizes that I am a werewolf, I expect that she will-"

"You don't know that she'll figure it out, Moony," said Sirius.

"If she does, I want Harry to be prepared."

"If she does, we will prepare Harry then. In the meantime, Harry will tell us if he notices anything unusual. Is that right, Harry?"

"Yeah," said Harry. "But we won't let her find out."

He sounded like his father again, and Remus bowed his head for an instant to hide a rush of emotion.

"What else did you learn at Hogwarts today?" asked Sirius.

Remus couldn't help laughing. He'd almost forgotten. "Dumbledore retrieved the Horcrux from the Lestranges' vault. I destroyed it. He thinks there's only one left to find."

Sirius jumped to his feet with delight and pounded both Remus and Harry on their backs. "And that slipped your mind? How shall we celebrate?"

Remus didn't care how they celebrated. Just being with them was celebration enough, at least for the moment.

_**To be continued.** _


	62. Harry and the Prefects

The night before the first day of Harry's fifth year was one of the most peaceful he had ever spent. He didn't need to worry about whether the Dursleys would take him to King's Cross Station. He didn't need to wonder whether an infamous escaped prisoner was really going to try to kill him at school. He didn't need to try to guess at Sirius' reasons for not officially asserting legal guardianship. He wasn't distracted by thoughts of whether his classmates would be whispering about him behind his back. He didn't even need to speculate as to who the next Defense Against the Dark Arts professor would be.

His biggest concern, which did not arise until Sirius had Apparated him to Platform 9 3/4, was where he would sit on the train. He had always enjoyed riding the Hogwarts Express because it meant that he was beside Ron and Hermione, whether he was reuniting with them after an endless summer or making plans with them before they separated. Harry didn't hate summer anymore, not now that summer meant Sirius, but he still loved walking into Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione at his side above all else.

That couldn't happen this year, he realized with a sinking sensation. He heard Hermione's voice, not calling his name excitedly, but telling Ron that they would be riding in the _prefects' compartment_ , getting their instructions from the Head Boy and Girl.

The days when Ron had made fun of Percy for bragging about the prefects' compartment seemed very long ago.

"All right?" asked Sirius. Sirius, too, looked worried. Harry remembered what Remus had told him (hadn't needed to tell him): that Sirius hated it when Harry returned to school.

"Do I really need to take the train?" asked Harry, suddenly wanting to delay saying goodbye a little longer. "I could walk from Hogsmeade."

"Not carrying your trunk and your owl, you can't," said Sirius.

"Harry!" called a voice, but it wasn't Hermione or Ron or any of the Weasleys. It was Ernie MacMillan, who held out his hand for Harry to shake as he detached himself from a cluster of Hufflepuffs. Ernie's chest was puffed out to show off his prefect's badge. There were prefects everywhere. Harry knew that there were only eight prefects in his year- one boy and one girl from each House- but suddenly it seemed as if he was the only fifth-year in all of Hogwarts who had not been made a prefect. He knew now why Lupin had offered more than once to discuss Dumbledore's decision not to make Harry a prefect. Lupin had known it would be like this.

"I haven't seen you since your party in July," said Ernie.

Harry thought it was a strange thing to say. He knew that he hadn't seen Ernie since his birthday party. He'd been there. "Yeah," said Harry stupidly. "Thanks for coming."

"You were really there, Ernie?" blurted out a girl Harry was fairly certain was called Megan Jones.

"Yes," said Ernie importantly. "I've never been to another party that was anything like it."

"Did you really turn an unplottable ballroom into a magical beach?" asked Hannah Abbot. She, too, was wearing a prefect's badge. It took Harry a minute to realize that she was asking him and not Ernie.

"Yeah, my godfather hired someone to do it. He thought that would be safer than an actual beach."

"It sounds amazing," she said enviously. She looked as if she might have said more, but Ernie took her by the arm to direct her toward the prefects' compartment.

"Come on," said Ernie. "We have to get our instructions from Cedric. It's especially important that the prefects from the Head Boy's own House get there early."

Harry tried not to roll his eyes. "Say hello to Cedric for me," he told them, and they said that they would.

He looked over his shoulder, suddenly afraid that Sirius had left without saying goodbye. But Sirius had only stepped backward into the shadows near the far wall. Even though Sirius' face was half-hidden in darkness, Harry could tell that he looked very pleased with himself.

"Why are you so happy?" Harry asked. He sounded rather rude to his own ears, but he knew Sirius wouldn't mind.

Sirius' smile became even more self-satisfied, which Harry wouldn't have thought possible. "It's been a month, but everyone's still talking about your party. That means I did it right."

"That wasn't everyone. That was just Ernie…"

"And a whole pack of girls, some of them very pretty, and at least one of them angling for an invitation to your next party."

"I'm not having another party," said Harry. He had enjoyed his party very much, but he had viewed it as a once in a lifetime experience, like releasing a boa constrictor at the zoo or knocking out a mountain troll in a girls' toilet.

"If you don't want to," said Sirius easily.

The train whistle blew, short and sharp and warning.

"You'd better find a compartment," said Sirius, hugging Harry awkwardly. "Check in with your mirror tonight."

"I will." The thought of the mirror made him feel better. It wasn't really goodbye, and Sirius would be at Hogwarts for the next full moon in two weeks. He grabbed his trunk; when he'd nearly reached the train, Ron and Hermione burst out of the prefects' compartment to greet him.

"Hi, Harry, we're glad you're here," said Hermione breathlessly. "We were afraid Sirius would make you late."

"I don't know who 'we' is," said Ron under his breath. Harry sniggered.

"We have to get back to the-"

"The prefects' compartment, I know," said Harry as lightly as he could. "Ron, help me with my trunk, first, will you? Part of your prefectly duty. Hermione will save you a seat."

Hermione, glowing, bounced back into the prefects' compartment.

"I'm not enjoying this," said Ron defensively as he helped Harry heft his trunk onto the train. "I'm not Percy."

"No one said you were Percy."

"No one except Fred and George ten times a minute every day since they saw the badge."

"Oh." Harry knew that that was probably true.

Harry made his way down the corridor, peering through the glass-paneled doors into the compartments. The compartments all looked full, and Harry was surprised when Cho Chang opened her compartment's door. "Do you need a place?" she asked. "We can make room." Her group of laughing sixth-year friends, of whom Harry knew only Marietta Edgecomb by name, nodded in agreement.

"Cho was just telling us about your birthday party," said Marietta.

"Yeah, it was great that Cho could come," said Harry awkwardly. "Sorry I need to talk to-"

The train gave a lurch and Harry rushed hastily down the corridor, glad that the train's squealing wheels hid the fact that he needed to talk to absolutely no one and he hadn't even been able to think of the name of a person he might want to talk to.

Harry passed by a few more carriages before a mixed group of Gryffindors and Ravenclaws in his year invited him to join them. It would have been more fun than sitting with Cho and her friends, but the compartment was inarguably full-Seamus and Dean and Lavender and Parvati and four Ravenclaws had all squeezed in together. Lavender and Parvati were sharing a seat and looking very giggly. "We can make room. Don't worry," said Lavender, and Harry remembered how strange (but not awful) it had been when she'd kissed him at his party.

"No you can't," he said with a laugh that he hoped sounded more natural than his refusal to sit with Cho. "Anyway, I have to talk to Angelina about Quidditch."

At least he'd learned to think up a better lie.

But he wouldn't have wanted to sit with Angelina and Alicia and Fred and George and Lee even if they'd invited him.

He wanted to sit with Ron and Hermione, and that would never happen again. They would ride in the prefects' compartment every time they boarded the Hogwarts Express from now until they finished school.

"Wait," said Seamus, catching the compartment door before it slid shut. "You're not a prefect?"

"No," said Harry, trying to squash the part of himself that was meanly glad that some of his classmates had assumed that he, not Ron, would be the Gryffindor prefect. "I cause too much trouble."

The others laughed appreciatively. "Padma's a prefect for Ravenclaw," said Parvati. She said it lightly, as if casually passing on information, but it struck Harry that if it was odd for him to watch his two best friends accept an honor that would never be bestowed upon him, it was even odder for Parvati to be distinguished from her identical twin sister in yet another way.

"Who's the Ravenclaw boy?" he asked.

"Anthony Goldstein," said one of the other Ravenclaws. Harry didn't know for certain which of the Ravenclaw boys was which, so he nodded as if Anthony Goldstein's name meant something to him and then waved goodbye to the group, telling them he would see them at the feast.

He continued his way down the corridor as the train picked up speed. He felt as alone as he had felt on his very first ride on the Hogwarts Express- until Ron had sat beside him.

In the very last carriage, Harry found Neville, Ginny, and a girl he didn't know. Neville and Ginny both called their greetings; the girl beside the window looked up. She had straggly, waist-length, dirty-blond hair, very pale eyebrows, and protuberant eyes that gave her a permanently surprised look. She gave off an aura of distinct dottiness. Perhaps it was the fact that she had stuck her wand behind her left ear for safekeeping or that she had chosen to wear a necklace of butterbeer caps, or that she was reading a magazine upside down.

"Okay if I join you?" he asked.

He knew that Ginny and Neville didn't mind; they'd both looked pleased to see him. He didn't know what to make of the blonde girl. "You're Harry Potter," she said.

"I know I am," said Harry. Neville chuckled.

"This is Luna Lovegood," said Ginny to Harry. "Luna's in my year, but in Ravenclaw."

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," said Luna in a singsong voice.

The train lurched around a sharp turn and Harry decided that it was for the best to take his seat and let Ginny update him on how the twins had snuck into Ron's bedroom while he slept and magically stuck a pair of horn-rimmed glasses like the ones Percy wore onto Ron's face.

"… Of course, it took Dad about two seconds to unstick them, but I've never seen Ron turn that shade of purple before," Ginny concluded as the door to their compartment slid open.

Harry turned, expecting to see the food trolley and reaching for his money pouch to buy pumpkin pasties and chocolate frogs for everyone in the compartment. Instead, though, he saw two of Ginny's roommates. Christianne Steele he knew; he spent a rather miserable night with her at the Yule Ball. He thought that the other girl's name might be Heather Hadley, and that was confirmed when Neville greeted them by name.

Christianne and Heather sat down without invitation in the two vacant seats Harry had hoped would be filled by Ron and Hermione once they'd received their instructions from Cedric.

"Those seats are saved," said Ginny, and Harry thought that he could have kissed her.

"We won't stay long," said Heather.

"We just wanted to know if it was true about Harry's birthday party," said Christianne.

"If what was true about it?" asked Harry.

"If there was really a magical beach in an unplottable house in London."

"Oh," said Harry. "Yes." He wished that all of the rumors people had spread about him over the years had been as accurate as that one.

"Do you want to come back to our compartment and tell us all about it?" asked Heather. "Romilda's mum sent along these really excellent chocolates, and Quincy has a bit of fire whiskey."

"Er, thanks, but I need to catch up with my friends," said Harry.

Christianne and Heather stood in unison. "If you change your mind, we're right in the middle on this side of the train," said Christianne.

The door shut behind them.

"They're trying to get you to invite them to your next party," said the girl called Luna. "They think that someone who throws a party like that shouldn't be sitting with us."

"Ginny and Neville were both at the party," said Harry, even as he realized that Luna was probably right. "And if I'd known you, I would have invited you, too."

Luna favored him with a scathing look. He didn't know Luna, but he knew the expression. She didn't believe him and imagined that he was teasing her. He didn't precisely want to announce that he'd been the one in the odd clothes who didn't get invited to parties five years before, but he did want to tell her that he had faith in Ginny and Neville's choice in friends.

Ginny explained for him. "He's not taking the mickey, Luna. He doesn't choose his friends the way you'd think he does."

Before Harry got a chance to ask how Ginny or Luna would have _thought_ he chose his friends, the door slid open again.

This time, it was Angelina. "I heard you wanted to talk to me?" she said to Harry.

Harry had to think quickly, because he couldn't very well tell Angelina that he'd lied about wanting to talk to her to get out of sitting with people he didn't know when all he really wanted was for Ron and Hermione to get out of the prefects' compartment and just be his friends again. "I only wanted to check in about Quidditch," he said. "We have to have tryouts right away, don't we? To replace Wood?"

Angelina brightened. "I'm glad you're taking this seriously," she said. "Some of the others think they can slack off now that Wood isn't here. I wish we hadn't missed a whole year."

"Me too," said Harry fervently.

"Everyone's going to be out of practice," Angelina fretted.

Harry looked past Angelina at Ginny, who had a look of intense longing on her face. He knew how much she wanted to play, and he knew that she was no Keeper- she was a Chaser if he'd ever seen one. "Maybe we should hold tryouts for all the positions," he said to Angelina. "I know Alicia was a reserve for a year, but ever since I've been here we've never had anyone to practice against. It might help if some of us really are out of practice, and it will definitely help next year when you and Alicia and the twins have graduated."

Angelina smiled slyly. "You just don't want me to leave the team a mess when you take over as captain next year."

Harry hadn't thought of being named captain, and he determined that he'd better not think of it even now that Angelina had mentioned it. Dumbledore might decide that it was for the best that Harry not be Quidditch captain, either. "I don't want you to leave the team a mess because I want Gryffindor to win this year _and_ next year," he told Angelina.

"That," she said, "is the right answer. And you're right about trying out reserves. We need someone else who's capable of playing Seeker in case you're in the hospital wing during an important match."

"I won't be in the hospital wing during any important matches," said Harry, even though he had definitely ended up in the hospital wing during important matches before.

"Good," said Angelina. "If you have any other bright ideas, we're up near the front."

As Angelina left, Ron and Hermione finally- finally- arrived. They were full of news about the other new prefects. Harry was unsurprised, but still displeased, to learn that Draco Malfoy was one of the Slytherin prefects.

"We're supposed to patrol the corridors every so often," said Ron. "We can give out punishments if people are misbehaving. I can't wait to get Crabbe and Goyle for something…"

"You're not supposed to abuse your position, Ron!" said Hermione sharply.

"Yeah, right, because Malfoy won't abuse it at all," said Ron sarcastically.

"So you're going to descend to his level?"

"No, I'm just going to make sure I get his mates before he gets mine."

"For heaven's sake, Ron-"

"I'll make Goyle do lines, it'll kill him, he hates writing," said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to Goyle's low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. "I…. must… not… look… like… a… baboon's… backside…"

Everyone laughed, and no one laughed harder than Luna. Ron looked pleased.

"Anyway," Ron said to Harry, "Malfoy has it out for you."

"I've known that for the last four years," said Harry. The food trolley arrived at last, and Harry ordered enough for everyone, waving off their offers to pay.

"I know, but he's worse than ever because he's got the badge, and he's angry about your birthday party."

"Don't tell me Malfoy wanted to be invited!" said Harry, accidentally letting a chocolate frog card tumble to the floor in surprise. He could understand, sort of, the things that Ginny's roommates and the Hufflepuff girls had said, but Draco Malfoy hated him and always had.

"No, but Cedric mentioned it to Hermione and me- he was just welcoming us as new prefects and that's the only time he'd ever talked to us before- and Malfoy- I wish you could have seen it. Said it was his family's ancestral home."

"Technically, that's true," said Harry. "He's Sirius' first cousin once removed. Wish Sirius would remove him four or five more times but that's not how it works."

The others laughed at that, too.

"Pansy Parkinson said it was pathetic that everyone was talking about your party," added Hermione. "And Cedric, just as polite as you like, told her that that isn't how prefects conduct themselves."

"And that made Malfoy even angrier," said Ron. "He doesn't like that you're in with the Head Boy. He's going to use the prefect thing against you every chance he gets."

Harry wasn't surprised, and he didn't want to talk any longer about prefects. He picked up his fallen chocolate frog card. "Anyone need Paracelsus?"

* * *

They piled into the horseless carriages that would take them from Hogsmeade to the castle. Ron and Hermione were supposed to supervise this, and so Harry shared a carriage with Luna, Ginny, and Neville.

He craned his neck to see if he could catch sight of Sirius' cottage and he wondered if Sirius felt alone in a crowd tonight, too. He hoped that Sirius had at least gone to the Three Broomsticks rather than brooding in the little house.

Hermione and Ron rejoined Harry as they filed into the Great Hall. As always, the castle was beautifully lit with candles. As distant as he felt from his two best friends (Ron was admiring his prefect's badge in every reflective surface they passed), and as much as he worried about Sirius, Harry couldn't help but feel as if he had come home from a long journey.

The hotel in Florida had been fun, but it hadn't been home. The cottage in Hogsmeade was the realization of a dream, but it wasn't home. Privet Drive most certainly wasn't home.

Hogwarts was home.

And when Ron and Hermione seated themselves on either side of Harry, he was doubly home.

He looked up at the staff table. Lupin caught his eye and waved; Harry and the others waved back.

Further along the staff table was a short, squat woman. She had short, curly, mouse-brown hair in which she had placed a horrible pink Alice band that matched the fluffy pink cardigan she wore over her robes. Her face was pallid and toadlike with a pair of prominent, pouchy eyes.

"That must be that Umbridge woman," Harry said.

"Who?" said Hermione.

"She's going to evaluate the school and the professors this year. Lupin warned me about her."

"Why would he need to warn you?"

"Because she's horrible."

"She looks horrible," Ron agreed.

Meanwhile, Hagrid appeared behind the staff table and worked his way to his usual seat at the very end. He, too, caught Harry's eye and gave him a wave. Hagrid's arrival meant that the first years had successfully crossed the lake. A fleeting part of Harry longed for his own trip across the lake with Ron and Hermione. Then, there had been no controversy over prefect appointments and no fear that Voldemort would return. (And no Sirius… he ached with the thought of what it would have been like to have had a home and a family before Hogwarts…)

The doors from the entrance hall opened and a line of scared-looking first years entered, led by Professor McGonagall, who carried the Sorting Hat.

The Sorting Hat sang its song, which sounded much like the other songs Harry had heard it sing. Slytherins were cunning and resourceful; Ravenclaws were wise and clever; Gryffindors were brave and gallant; Hufflepuffs were kind and loyal.

After the long line of first years had been Sorted, Professor Dumbledore gave the usual speech about staying out of the Forbidden Forest (Harry almost laughed), upcoming Quidditch tryouts (Angelina glanced meaningfully at Harry), and looking to the Head Boy and Girl for leadership (Harry cheered loudly for Cedric). Last of all, Dumbledore introduced Undersecretary Umbridge. She cleared her throat and stood as if to speak, but too quickly Dumbledore shouted "tuck in!" and the tables filled with food. Suddenly ravenous, Harry grabbed for everything he could reach.

* * *

When the feast had been eaten, Ron and Hermione had to guide the first years to the common room and Harry was left alone again. Well, not truly alone; he fell into step with Seamus, Dean, and Neville as they made their way to their dormitory. Seamus told a lively story, no less interesting for probably being a gross exaggeration, involving his cousin's best friend who had lured him up to her old treehouse and then had to remove her robes because they'd gotten wet…

The four of them sprawled across their beds, not ready to go to sleep but too pleasantly full from the feast to want to move. Eventually Seamus unlatched his trunk and slyly removed what looked like a boomerang.

Neville sat straight up and sucked in his breath. Harry and Dean glanced at each other; neither one knew exactly why a boomerang warranted much of a reaction.

"Is that an ever-bashing boomerang?" asked Neville keenly.

"It is," said Seamus proudly. "My dad's a Muggle, so he didn't know it was against the rules when I bought it along with my books."

Harry remembered, now, that ever-bashing boomerangs were on the seemingly endless list of banned items that Flich posted around the castle.

"Shall we let it loose and see what happens?" asked Seamus.

The others agreed that that was a wonderful idea.

Seamus tapped the boomerang with his wand and it took off flying wildly about the room. Unlike a regular boomerang, it did not return to Seamus. Instead, it slammed into the wall, and then a bedpost, before changing direction and taking aim at Harry. Harry had to jump quickly to get out of the way while the others laughed uproariously.

After ten minutes, Harry reflected that it was best that none of them had yet unpacked their trunks, because the boomerang was determined to hit everything in sight. Their laughter and swears grew louder with every swoop of the boomerang. They were all breathless and sweating from avoiding the boomerang when the door opened to admit Ron.

Harry didn't know why he froze at the sight of Ron. He supposed that perhaps he would have frozen if anyone had opened the door. They were, after all, breaking school rules and having a fine time doing it.

The other three froze as well, and Seamus raised his wand to stop the boomerang before it took aim at Ron. "Finite Incantantem," he said quickly.

The boomerang fell to the floor.

Seamus stood in the middle of the room, his wand at his side. Neville was crouched on the floor beside his bed; Dean was standing on top of Seamus' bed; and Harry had backed himself into into one of the alcoves in which the windows were set. They were all silent until Harry jumped off of the window sill, and quickly wished he hadn't; his feet echoed too loudly off of the stone floor.

Ron stood in the doorway and stared at them all with a strange look on his face. "What are you doing?" he asked, and his voice was strange, too.

"Nothing," said Dean quickly, and it was a stupid answer. But then, the question was stupid too; it was obvious what they had been doing.

"It was just a bit of a laugh," said Neville. "We've stopped, now."

Ron turned around and stomped out of the room. Harry knew that he had to follow Ron even if he had no idea what to say.

"You lot put that away and get ready for curfew," he suggested to the others as he removed the Marauder's Map, his invisibility cloak, and Sirius' mirror from his trunk as surreptitiously as possible. The others were all too busy staring at the ground to notice exactly what Harry shoved into his bag.

* * *

He did not, as it happened, need the map to find Ron, because Ron hadn't gotten past the common room.

Fred's voice drifted up to Harry as he ran down the last flight of stairs. "Your roommates kick you out because you've decided to be a prig like Percy? Can't blame them, really."

"Nobody kicked anybody out," said Harry loudly. "Come on, Ron, we've got to meet Lupin. His note said right away."

Of course, Lupin hadn't sent any note of the kind, but it was believable enough to the twins. Harry and Ron passed through the Fat Lady's portrait and headed for Lupin's office.

"What happened?" Harry asked Ron when they'd reached an empty corridor.

"You tell me what happened," said Ron angrily. "You were all having a laugh, and as soon as I came in you stopped because I'm a prefect and you think I'm no fun anymore."

"We don't think that," said Harry, even though he was reasonably sure that Seamus would have hesitated to pull out the ever-bashing boomerang if Ron had come up to the room with the rest of them.

"I didn't ask for this. I didn't want it!"

Harry knew that Ron was lying. Ron had admired his badge in the reflection cast by a spoon during dessert, and that had put Harry in mind of another mirror… a mirror he'd seen back in his first year… a mirror that showed not a reflection but a heart's desire.

Harry had looked into the mirror and seen his parents.

Ron had looked into the mirror and seen himself as Head Boy. Ron had seen himself as Quidditch captain, too, but he had never done anything but cheer for Harry when Harry had played even though there was no opportunity for Ron to make the team.

"It would be all right if you did want it," said Harry quietly. "We both know Hermione wanted it, and we still like her."

"Well, that's Hermione, isn't it," said Ron. "She doesn't care if Lavender and Parvati think she isn't any fun."

"Cedric is fun, and he's Head Boy," said Harry. "Not all prefects are like Percy. I haven't spent that much time with Bill, but he doesn't seem like Percy even though they're brothers."

"That's true," said Ron, a bit more cheerfully.

They had reached Lupin's door by now. Harry knocked. He wasn't sure of the current password, but he doubted that Lupin had gone to bed yet. The teachers had to sort out any number of things on the last day before classes began (at least, the good ones did).

"He didn't really send a note asking us to come, did he?" asked Ron.

"No, he did not," answered Lupin as the door slid open. "But as you're here, you may as well come in."

Ron and Harry obeyed, casting a wary glance at the rattling case in the corner of the room. "Boggart for the third years tomorrow," Lupin said mildly.

Harry and Ron grinned at the memory of their own boggart class. "What will we be doing?" Harry asked.

"Blocking hexes," said Lupin. "The upper years will be doing more dueling this year. Is it all right with you if I bring Sirius in to demonstrate, Harry?"

"Fine with me," said Harry, who thought it sounded brilliant. Sirius' mirror was heavy in his bag. He had to remember to say goodnight to Sirius before they left Lupin's office. He hoped, again, that Sirius wasn't too lonely.

"But I imagine that that is not why the two of you came to see me?" asked Lupin, glancing back and forth between Harry and Ron.

"I don't know why we're here, either," said Ron.

"We're here because Ron wants to know what he should do, as a prefect, if hypothetically he came into his dormitory and found his roommates doing something against the rules. And he knows he's a prefect so he's supposed to tell them to stop, but he also doesn't want his roommates to think he's no fun."

"It's not that!" said Ron. "I was never going to tell you to stop. I mean, I never would have, hypothetically, if you'd been doing something. But if you all shut up and stop laughing every time I come into a room, I don't want to be a prefect. It's not worth it."

Lupin's smile was sad. "Tell me more about this hypothetical situation, Ron. Was what you saw your roommates doing dangerous?"

Ron shrugged. "I mean, Mum wouldn't let us do it in the Burrow but it's not any more dangerous than Quidditch."

"Was everyone involved a willing participant?"

"Definitely."

"Was it against school rules?"

"Yes."

"You need to be more careful of school rules this year than you were in the past, Ron. I said this to Harry the other day, and now I'm saying it to you. Dolores Umbridge has more power than you think and she will abuse it. She will take away anything that gives you happiness, whether that is your prefect's badge or your new broom. If you run afoul of her, she will isolate you and prey on your worst impulses."

"You're talking about her like she's a dementor," said Ron,

"They do have things in common," said Remus darkly. "Now, as a professor, I cannot tell you to let rule breaking slide, especially when someone is being victimized. As a former prefect whose friends were terrible rule breakers, I can admit that sometimes picking your battles is the only reasonable option. It sounds as if you had no intention of stopping your roommates from hypothetically…"

"Playing with an ever-bashing boomerang," Harry supplied. "Hypothetically playing with an ever-bashing boomerang in our dormitory."

This time Lupin's smile was more relaxed and amused. "Right. But they saw you and they stopped because they didn't know whether you were going to punish them. Perhaps they even told you how little fun you are?"

"They didn't say anything," admitted Ron. "But it's all my brothers ever say."

"You cannot go through your life worrying about what your brothers say. You need to decide what you believe is right and honor your own belief. Do you believe it's right to betray the faith the Headmaster has placed in you by giving you that badge by using your position for your own gain and ignoring your responsibilities when it's convenient?"

"No," said Ron.

"Do you believe that there is ever a time when someone in authority should look the other way because a rule is a bad rule, or because the letter of the rule is being violated but the spirit of the rule is not?"

"Yes," said Ron.

"I cannot tell you how to balance those two impulses, not least because I was terrible at it when I was your age. But I can assure you that friends who would hold your position against you- truly, not just a bit of teasing- were never your friends to begin with."

"No one was holding anything against you tonight. Hypothetically," said Harry.

"I get that," said Ron.

"Well," said Lupin cheerfully. "That's settled. I will write you a note giving you permission to be out of bed at this hour, but I shall not make a habit of doing so."

"Thank you," said Harry and Ron in unison.

Harry gathered up his bag, pulling out Sirius' mirror as he did. "Sirius?" he asked.

Sirius appeared immediately. Harry's heart sank; Sirius' eyes looked shadowed and his smile looked rather forced. "Hello, Harry. Made it back to the castle all right?"

Harry suddenly wished that they could be alone so he could tell Sirius how difficult it was to watch Ron and Hermione move on without him and how worried he was that Sirius felt abandoned now that the Hogwarts term had begun again. But they weren't alone. "Yeah, we made it back. Dumbledore started the feast before Umbridge could say anything."

Sirius chuckled. "Good."

"And since I'm in Professor Lupin's office, I can't tell you that Seamus has an ever-bashing boomerang."

This time Sirius laughed outright, and Harry thought it would be worth a detention to drive the awful shadowed look out of Sirius' eyes, even just for a moment. "I'll get you one if you'd like. Or perhaps you'd prefer a fanged frisbee?"

"What are you doing tonight, Sirius?" Harry asked.

Sirius' face hardened and his eyes shuttered. "Celebrating that I'm rid of you for the rest of the term, of course," he said, but the joke fell flat. "Goodnight, Harry."

"Goodnight, Sirius," said Harry, but Sirius was already gone.

"I'll owl him," said Lupin quietly as he pressed a square of parchment into Harry's hand. "Straight back to your dormitory, now."

Harry and Ron went. "He really misses you, doesn't he?" said Ron as they approached Gryffindor Tower.

Harry didn't say anything. He couldn't find the words. It seemed as if a very long time had passed since Sirius had brought him to the Hogwarts Express that morning, and he knew that an even longer time had passed for Sirius.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer : There are a number of quotes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in this chapter, most notably Harry's first impression of Luna; Ron's view of being a prefect; and Harry's description of Umbridge.


	63. Sirius, Fighting

Sirius had been the one to tell Harry to check in with his mirror in the first place, but when Harry had actually done it (because Harry was that kind of kid), Sirius found himself seething with rage.

Harry had clearly called him out of a sense of duty, out of a sense that his lonely pathetic godfather needed looking after. He didn't doubt that Harry and Remus had had a conversation about how sad it was that Sirius didn't have a life outside of them, and that they were allowed to spend the year at Hogwarts because they were fully actualized people and Sirius was not.

In Sirius' humble opinion, he had handled his incarceration extraordinarily well. He hadn't broken under the torture or the cold or the loneliness. He'd always been decent at being alone; as a child, he'd certainly preferred his own company to that of his family. Even in school, he'd found only a small subset of his classmates truly tolerable in large doses. James was almost the only person of whom Sirius had never, ever tired.

On any given day in Azkaban, Sirius hadn't felt lonely at all. He'd become accustomed to solitude, and the state of being alone had been completely natural.

Now, though, it was painful. Eight weeks of being with Harry almost all day, almost every day, had reminded him keenly of what he had lost.

He should have had Harry every day for ten years.

During those ten years, he should have had the opportunity to build a home and a life.

But even though he'd been a member of Dumbledore's Order, even though he'd fought harder against Voldemort than almost anyone else in wizarding Britain, no one had bothered to confirm that he belonged in Azkaban. Actual Death Eaters didn't go to Azkaban; they lied like Lucius Malfoy or hid like Peter Pettigrew or traded secrets like Igor Karkaroff.

Dumbledore, who had handpicked Sirius for the bloody Order in the first place, and who enjoyed almost infinite power, hadn't explored the possibility that Sirius might have been falsely accused.

A voice in the back of Sirius' mind- a voice that sounded suspiciously like Remus- politely suggested that he ought to remember how perfectly he'd framed himself, how wonderfully his own plan had worked to convince Dumbledore and everyone else that he was guilty, how long his history of impulsive and dangerous behavior had been by the time he'd been accused of blowing up those Muggles.

Another voice in the back of his Sirius' mind- this one sounding a bit like Félicité Palomer-reminded him of exactly how bad it had looked when Wormtail had blown up the street. He remembered the sorts of questions she had asked when she'd instructed him to think about finding James' body:

_What do you see?_

November 1, 1981, had been a dull, mild day. The night before he hadn't been able to see the moon; now he could see the faint outline of the sun, but the light filtered half-heartedly into the grey streets of London.

Peter had Muggle relatives and had perhaps thought that he could blend into the Muggle world so that Sirius would never find him. But Sirius knew London. Sirius had spent his formative years in London, never quite so isolated from the diverse energy of the city as his parents would have liked. Even better, Sirius knew how to follow a magical trail as a human and how to follow a rat's scent as a dog.

He saw the dull greyness- he knew that the world would always be dull and grey now- but he also saw the brilliance of Muggle London, the city he had loved even before he knew that that love was forbidden.

He saw brick buildings pressed up against the pavement. Dozens of sets of steps led to dozens of doorways. Above the dozens of doorways were dozens of windows in which were hung dozens of curtains. Most of the curtains were white; one set, Sirius remembered in curiously vivid detail, was bright orange. He would always wonder about the family that had hung the bright orange curtains and think that he might have liked to have known them.

He saw cars lined along every inch of the street.

He saw a crater in the middle of the street, deep enough to have pierced the sewer below. He saw flames and smoke.

Above all, he saw bodies. There were twelve corpses. He was numb to them, but he saw them.

Three young men- close to Sirius' own age- in Muggle business suits had been tossed in an undignified heap at the bottom of the crater.

An older man and woman had been thrown over the top of a car and slammed into the brick wall of the nearest building. Their bodies lay on the pavement, twisted in ways that bodies should never be twisted.

A woman about his mother's age had somehow, in the split second before the street exploded, thrown herself over three children. All three were girls. They wore matching uniforms that no doubt signified one of the local schools. The blonde girl wore pink ribbons in her hair; the dark-haired girl clutched a toy horse even in death. The last girl stared vacantly at the dim sky.

Another woman had been thrown close to Sirius' feet. Her body had been cut neatly in half. Her blood coated the street.

The man on the other side of the street had been decapitated.

The last body was so thoroughly disemembered that Sirius couldn't tell whether its owner had been male or female.

Every one of the twelve corpses meant that at least one more person was now just as devastated as Sirius had been ever since he'd seen James' body.

What he didn't see was Peter, because Peter had taken his rat form and vanished into the sewer.

He knew that Peter's finger must be on the ground, because he'd seen Peter cut it off, but it had blended into the debris to be found later by an overeager underling from the Department of Magical Catastrophes.

_What do you smell?_

The smoke and dust coated his throat, just as they had short hours before when he'd stood in the wreckage of the Potter's house in Godric's Hollow. The stench of the sewer made its way through the smoke. The tangy, iron smell of blood would not be ignored.

Beneath it was the smell of cars: petrol and rubber. There a faint whiff of perfume and a fainter whiff of eggs. The Muggles had been beginning their mornings, leaving for school and work, when Sirius and Peter had interrupted their day with a quarrel of which they'd known nothing. Would never know anything.

_What are you touching?_

Again, he was clenching his wand too tightly, just as he had in Godric's Hollow. His fingernails were digging into his own palm.

His robes were clammy with sweat and the air was thick against his skin.

_What do you taste?_

Bile. It had replaced the dust and ashes. It seemed that he had been inhaling dust and ashes for an eternity.

_What do you hear?_

Peter was gone, but Sirius heard his voice still. Shrill, loud, accusatory.

Sobbing.

_Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?_

Other voices joined Peter's. A woman shouting for a man named John. A child shouting for his father. Two or three screaming incoherently; two or three more calling for help.

He could hear the Muggle sirens. Soon help would be on the way, both magical and Muggle. Soon the witnesses would repeat the words, over and over.

_Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?_

They wouldn't be right, but they wouldn't be wrong, either.

* * *

Sirius laughed.

He heard his laughter in the past; he laughed, too, in the present.

He laughed until he sobbed on the floor of the horrible house he'd bought to be closer to the boy he'd orphaned

Before he knew it, he'd left the little house behind- he hated that place, hated it almost as much as Grimmauld Place and Azkaban- and stomped into the Hog's Head. It was as filthy as always and that suited Sirius' mood.

Behind the bar, Aberforth's mouth twisted to the side. Sirius stood up even straighter. He didn't care what Aberforth thought of him. "Fire whiskey," he said, with no pretended pleasantries and certainly no explanation.

Aberforth served the drink without comment. The glass bore an array of fingerprints and a previous patron's lipstick as well as the usual grime. Sirius didn't care. He was beyond niceties. He had been born beyond niceties.

He drank the fire whiskey in one swallow and asked for another.

"I'll join you." Aberforth produced another glass, no cleaner than the first, and sat beside Sirius.

"I didn't ask you to join me," said Sirius.

"I own the Hog's Head and I will join anyone I care to join."

Sirius grunted and drank the second fire whiskey, carefully not bothering to acknowledge that Aberforth was drinking as well. "Another."

Aberforth poured a third drink. "Drink this one slowly because I'm not giving you another one for half an hour."

"That's ridiculous."

"You're free to leave. You know the way to the Three Broomsticks."

Sirius grimaced. He did know the way to the Three Broomsticks. He knew that it would be crowded enough that Rosmerta and the girls she employed wouldn't be able to keep track of how much he'd drunk, and they certainly wouldn't cut him off after a paltry three drinks.

He also knew that the Three Broomsticks would be sickeningly loud and cheerful. He didn't want to see happy people. He thought that he might hex any happy people who crossed his path.

Sirius let the first half of his third fire whiskey rest in his mouth. He didn't swallow. He let the flavor, such as it was, course over and around his tongue. The insides of his cheeks started to numb; the rest of his mouth burned. He wished the fire could consume the rest of his body and drive out the memories of the summer he'd had with Harry.

"The roof of your mouth is going to blister."

Sirius swallowed reluctantly. "You've got a lot of rules. First you think I'm drinking too fast, and now you think I'm not drinking fast enough."

"You know the way to the Three Broomsticks."

"You don't like business?"

"I don't like your sort of business right now."

"I don't like your brother right now."

Aberforth raised his glass in a silent toast to Sirius. "I often don't like my brother."

In spite of himself, Sirius chuckled. "I often didn't like mine, either."

"I always had some sympathy for Regulus. Younger brother, always in the shadow of the brilliant older brother. I know the feeling."

"Your sympathy is misplaced." He drank that second half of his fire whiskey and regretted it bitterly. Now there would be no more for half an hour unless he went to a pleasant place and interacted with pleasant people. "Our parents never hesitated to tell him that he was a much better son than I was."

"As you like." Aberforth broke his word and poured Sirius another drink, which Sirius felt he'd more than earned.

An owl swooped into the room just then and dropped a letter in front of Sirius. Sirius flipped it over in his hands. It was from Remus, of course. Remus pitied him like Harry pitied him, but he supposed that he preferred their pity to Aberforth's implication that Regulus had somehow deserved better from Sirius.

_Dear Mr. Padfoot:_

_My older students are in great need of dueling practice. In addition to their classes, I would like to allow them to attend a "dueling club" several times this year. I think a proper demonstration is in order before we open the club, and you happen to be the only person I know who is currently a member of an actual elite dueling club, would you be willing to be my opponent? Two weeks from tonight?_

_Regards,_

_Mr. Moony_

_P.S. If you don't go to bed tonight I will know._

* * *

He went back to the cottage and turned back the quilt on his bed. Propped against the pillow was a book of crossword puzzles and a chocolate frog.

He set them on the table and fantasized about disemboweling Moony in front of the whole school.

(He did know the counter-spell for re-emboweling, so it wouldn't be that big a deal.)

* * *

The next morning, he found that the roof of his mouth was raw and swollen. The fire whiskey had burned until it blistered.

He considered hexing Aberforth for being right, but instead he wrote to Remus.

_Dear Mr. Moony:_

_Thank you for the crossword puzzles and the chocolate frog._

_I will, of course, be delighted to defeat you thoroughly in front of all of your students and colleagues at your little children's dueling club. You will recall disgracing me in front of my godson and his friends at a garden picnic about a year ago and will understand that you deserve payback rather than mercy._

_Regards,_

_Mr. Padfoot_

* * *

He had nothing to do and no one to see for the next three days. His burned mouth made eating painful, but he cared very little; he had no appetite. He sent a message to Andromeda informing her that he would miss the next family dinner.

He was unsurprised when Tonks appeared on his doorstep within the hour.

"That didn't take long," he said as she pushed through the doorway, knocked over an abandoned teacup, and settled herself on a chair.

"That's the thing about desk duty." Her words were tinged with a bitterness he could appreciate. "I'm not doing anything worthwhile, so it's easy enough for me to keep regular hours. Or no hours. Or run errands for Mum."

"You're an Auror. You don't need to be scared of your mother."

"I agree with my delightful, wise, and intelligent mother," said Tonks as primly as she could, which wasn't really very primly at all. "You ought to come to dinner with us."

"Why?"

"Because we're fun."

"We have different ideas of fun."

"I'm almost sure we don't."

"Anna can survive without me for one week."

"She survived without you for a month while you were busy taking Harry all around the world." She paused, considering what she had just said. "Are you angry with Mum?"

"No. Why would I be angry with her?"

"Just on principle, because she named her only daughter Nymphadora Vulpecula?"

"I admit that I don't know why an ordinarily sane woman who do such a thing. Feel free to tell Anna that that's why I won't come."

"I'd prefer a real reason."

"I have a prior engagement."

"Every night this week and next?"

"I'm extremely popular."

"You ignore almost everyone who isn't Harry or Remus, and both of them are at Hogwarts."

Sirius felt his eyes narrow at the mention of Remus' name. "Did Moony send you to check on me?"

"Mum sent me. I thought we'd established that."

"You could be killing two birds with one stone. I know Moony told you to look after me last year." In fact, he knew nothing of the kind, but he was willing to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to find out.

"He did, last year," said Tonks, and Sirius inwardly congratulated himself for his cleverness. "I haven't spoken to him since we returned from Florida."

"Why not?"

She screwed up her face the way she usually did before she morphed but didn't say anything.

"You have a chance at happiness. Why won't you take it?"

"Why won't you come to dinner?"

"I'll answer yours if you'll answer mine," he offered, determining that there was no real reason not to tell the truth and that he might as well help out his friend and his cousin if he could.

"Fine." She gave him a hard look. "Why won't you come to dinner?"

"I burned my mouth drinking fire whiskey. Hurts too much to eat."

"That's really possible?" she asked interestedly.

"I didn't think it was until it happened. If you drink at a normal pace, you'll be fine, but if you hold it in your mouth for too long…" he shrugged.

"There has to be a potion that can help with that. Mum's good at healing potions, she can make something, or if not she'll just serve you yogurt or cucumber soup or something."

She had worn him down. "All right. I'll come. Your turn."

A bright smile flashed across her face, making her pink hair seem even pinker. "Brilliant. Mum'll be so pleased. You know how much it means to her to have you back."

He did know, and he felt like an arse, now, for refusing the invitation in the first place. "Answer my question, Nymphadora."

"Don't call me Nymphadora."

"Don't fail to hold up your end of our bargain."

She sighed and suddenly looked several years younger. "I don't want to feel like I'm fated to do something. Like I'm not in control of my own life. Like I'm destined to fall in love with this man instead of being able to choose him. My parents- my Mum- she was supposed to be one thing. The pureblood princess, the perfect Black. She ignored what everyone told her she had to be and decided to be someone else, the woman who chose a Muggle-born and left her family behind. I always admired that. I always wanted to be my own person. I chose to be an Auror even though the program hardly admits any applicants. I chose to be a Hufflepuff even though the Sorting Hat offered me- offered me other paths. I chose my friends even when it seemed like we wouldn't fit- Tulip's parents still don't like me. I thought I chose Remus, but I didn't. He set things up. Or the universe set things up. I want to know that I'm the one responsible for my own life, that no one and nothing else decreed that I had to be Remus' wife and Teddy's mother."

"He told you about Teddy?"

She nodded. "I know he wants him back. I can't blame him. I don't want to hurt him. I- I'm confused. Is that enough of an answer?"

"It is."

"Can we duel now?"

He grinned. "We can."

* * *

Their duel ended in a draw when a stray spell struck the neighbor's kneazle. They had a nice time anyway.

* * *

Andromeda did, as it happened, know how to cure fire whiskey-induced burns. Sirius realized how much he'd missed her over the summer.

He still felt hollow and useless without Harry.

He tucked his hair behind his ear and thought perhaps he would let it grow long again. At the very least, he wouldn't cut it until Halloween.

* * *

When it was finally time for him to visit Hogwarts and throw some nasty hexes at his last surviving friend, he no longer felt like doing it. Lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling felt much more appealing. But he had given his word, and he dragged himself toward the castle as promised.

It appeared that the entire school had assembled for the dueling exercise, and it felt as if every student turned to stare at Sirius as he entered the Great Hall. Eyes widened; jaws dropped; tongues whispered behind cupped hands.

He was a common enough sight in Hogsmeade that his neighbors had mostly stopped doing startled double takes when he passed by. The people he chose to meet outside of Hogsmeade- largely Andromeda's family and the members of the Flagstone Dueling Club- treated him casually enough. The Muggles he'd seen when he'd spent the summer with Harry were sometimes openly curious about him, but in a way that spoke of interest, not terror.

At least half of the children in the Great Hall were afraid of him. He couldn't entirely blame them; he _had_ broken into their school and caused a bit of a crisis less than two years before.

He'd kept to himself so much since his name had been cleared that he'd forgotten that he was still notorious.

The Death Eater.

The man who betrayed the Potters.

The escaped prisoner.

The killer.

He made his way easily through the crowd to Remus; students flinched and stepped out of his way.

"You required the entire student body to give up their Thursday evening to be here?" he asked by way of greeting.

"I only required it of the fourth years and up." Remus was beaming, and Sirius had to be pleased about that even if he hated everything else in the universe. "The younger students asked to be here. Begged, in some cases."

"And now they'll have to watch as their beloved Defense professor is completely humiliated."

"I'll demonstrate how to be graceful in defeat if that's the case. And I expected the same from you, Padfoot. Don't be funny." If Sirius hadn't known Remus very, very well, he would have thought that Remus actually didn't care if he lost the duel.

"No wonder you didn't ask Snivellus to help you demonstrate," whispered Sirius. "Grace in defeat was never one of his strong points." It wasn't one of Sirius' own strong points, either, but he didn't feel the need to mention that.

_Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?_

He shoved the memory out of his mind. He'd never underestimated Remus' strength the way he'd underestimated Peter's. He had incontrovertible evidence that Remus didn't want anything bad to happen to him.

He still felt the blood drain from his face as he remembered again the day he'd tracked Peter down.

He watched again as Peter cut off his own finger.

He almost grabbed Remus by the arm and told him that he would not, could not, do this. Half of the professors in attendance were perfectly qualified to help Remus demonstrate a proper duel.

No.

He wouldn't disappoint Moony- nor Harry, who had to be in the throng somewhere with Ron and Hermione.

Remus, meanwhile, was directing a dozen people at once: professors, prefects, students. Sirius managed to compose himself completely before Remus launched into his introductory speech, telling students what to watch for and assuring them that they would have their own turns soon enough. He told them that their grades would rest on what they observed while watching their fellow students (and their professor, too), not on how far they advanced in the tournament themselves.

Sirius thought that that was a lousy way of evaluating students, but he wasn't the professor.

"Sirius," said Remus, and even though he'd barely been half-listening, Sirius knew that it was time to take his place across from Remus.

The other professors were situated at likely spots around the Great Hall, ready to intercept spells that might go astray lest Sirius or Remus hit an eleven-year-old with a Stunner.

(To be fair, it would probably be worth it to the eleven-year-old. He could dine out on the story of being knocked unconscious by the infamous Sirius Black for the rest of his life.)

They drew.

They bowed.

They fought.

Remus hit him in the chest straight away, and the Great Hall erupted in cheers. Either the students really loved Moony or they absolutely despised Sirius. Quite possibly both.

Sirius rolled to the ground as he recovered and conjured hundreds of birds to circle and disorient Remus. It was one of the easiest conjuring spells, but it was also damn impressive when done on a grand scale. The students should have cheered.

They booed.

It reminded him of the day he'd been Sorted. He'd had hundreds of Hogwarts students booing him then, too.

He hadn't cared when he was eleven and he didn't care now.

He threw a series of stunning and binding spells at Remus, hoping he was too distracted by the birds to block them, but no such luck; Moony was quick to recover.

They circled each other again, warily.

No doubt for his students' amusement, Remus set a series of the silliest spells in his repertoire at Sirius. He didn't succeed in making Sirius sprout boils or quack like a duck, but he did manage to turn Sirius' hair a glittery purple.

Sirius didn't care if his hair was purple, per se, but the glimpses he kept catching of it as he and Remus continued to exchange spells were an unwelcome distraction. Perhaps he should reconsider his decision not to cut it?

He would think about that later.

He cast _Stupefy_ with his wand and _Incendio_ with his free left hand.

He'd been practicing for months at Flagstone to get that combination right. Hestia had laughed when he'd bunked it up and let her win the championship in July, but no one was laughing now. Remus expected the Stunner; he didn't expect the burning charm. As his robes caught fire, he turned for just long enough-

" _Expelliarmus_ !"

He wasn't certain what Remus cast- he must have cast it nonverbally- but the end result was that they both lost their wands.

They threw themselves to the ground unceremoniously, punching and clawing and wrestling as they tried to grab the wands. It was wonderful. It was just like being in the woods, or in Remus' room, on the full moon.

It was even more wonderful when Sirius grabbed both wands with his left hand and trussed Remus up like-

Like Remus had trussed Peter on the night Sirius had finally found them both after twelve long years.

Professor Flitwick shouted that the duel was over. There was a roar from the students (some of whom were now rooting for Sirius, the bandwagoners).

" _Finite Incantantem_ ," said Sirius, and he pulled Remus to his feet, returning his wand as he did.

" _Finite Incantantem_ ," Remus answered in turn. For a split second Sirius wondered why; then, as he felt a cool ripple across his scalp, he remembered the purple hair. He considered making a very dirty joke about how much Remus obviously missed Tonks, but he supposed it wasn't the time and place. He had, after all, promised to be graceful, win or lose.

They bowed, and Remus launched into a series of questions to the older students: what had he done wrong? What had _Sirius_ done wrong? How many nonverbal spells had they noticed?

Then, quickly, the students divided themselves into groups in the four corners of the Great Hall. Sirius quickly realized that the students had been divided by year, and he hastened to the fifth years' corner to watch Harry.

A few of the fifth years- the ones who had attended Harry's party- greeted him as pleasantly as could reasonably be expected while they were working themselves up into a mock- murderous frenzy.

Sirius evaluated Harry's classmates quickly as he watched. Most of them were hopeless. (Remus would have said things about how they were still learning and had many strengths, but Sirius wasn't Remus. Most of them were rubbish and would always be rubbish.)

A few, Hermione and Ron among them, were decent and had the potential to be good.

Harry was head and shoulders above the rest. He dispatched his classmates quickly, but not unkindly, and Sirius recalled that Harry was used to sparring with two or three of his classmates at once.

The only other fifth year who might challenge Harry, Sirius realized with no pleasure, was Narcissa's brat. Draco knew what he was doing even without Snape's occasional whispered instruction.

Harry still dispatched Draco with little trouble.

Sirius let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding and pretended that his attention was partially on the seventh years. Cedric defeated Fred for the seventh year championship, but the Weasleys were not without success; Ginny had become the fourth year champion rather easily. A dark-haired Slytherin girl about whom Sirius knew nothing prevailed among the sixth years.

Remus called the students to attention again and reminded them that their essays evaluating the duels they had watched would be due at their first Defense class next week. He then asked the prefects to ensure that everyone returned to their dormitories and common rooms with the utmost alacrity.

Sirius was making his way toward the door when Harry appeared beside him.

"You were great," said Harry. "You lit Lupin on fire."

Sirius chuckled. "You were better," he returned honestly. "Though if I were you, I'd watch my back around Narcissa's little shit."

"I always do."

Of course he did. The greatest dangers weren't always the obvious ones.

_Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?_

Sirius hated September the way he hated November. They were both much too close to October.

_**To be continued** _


	64. The Inspection

Remus' first hint that anything had gone wrong with the dueling exercise came when he sat beside Flitwick as the staff table the next morning. Flitwick's tone and expression were both more serious than usual.

"Remus, we need to discuss Edward Owens. I believe you're teaching the sixth-year class today."

"Yes," Remus agreed. He felt a pang of anger that Edward Owens had done something that warranted Flitwick's concern. Edward was _Teddy's_ name. Therefore, all other Edwards ought to behave in a way that justified sharing it.

"As Mr. Owens' Head of House, I've already taken points from him. He will be spending the next month serving detention in the kitchens."

As far as Remus knew, the easygoing Flitwick had never before punished a student so severely- and Edward Owens was one of his own.

"However," Flitwick continued, "I strongly suggest that you do not allow him to take part in any sparring that may be a part of your curriculum for the foreseeable future."

"I will," Remus found himself agreeing before so much as asking why. "What happened to warrant such a severe punishment?"

"You and Sirius made quite an impression, dueling like Muggles once you'd both lost your wands. When he and Lyssa Banks managed to disarm each other last night, he took the opportunity to slide his hand under her bra under the guise of attempting to beat her to the wands. He claimed, of course, that the contact was incidental, but I was looking directly at them when it happened."

Remus closed his eyes in annoyance. He had thought that the night had gone so well.

"I arranged for some immediate justice by allowing him to face Stephanie Wheeler in the championship duel for the sixth years," Flitwick added. "He's no match for her, as she's far the best duelist in sixth year. She and Miss Banks are good friends- lived in the same town before they came to Hogwarts. I'll find an excuse to give Miss Wheeler points for Slytherin when I have her this morning."

"Is Lyssa all right?" Remus was irritated with himself for taking so long to ask. His student's well-being should have been his first thought, long before he'd lamented the stain on his dueling exercise.

"She tells me that she is, but do let me know if you spot anything out of the ordinary with her."

Remus felt doubly guilty as he realized that he knew very little of what was ordinary for Lyssa Banks. She was part of the group of sixth-year Ravenclaws that included Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecomb. Her work was good but not outstanding; she was quiet but not too quiet; she had a way of blending in with the others.

He'd been teaching for more than two years now. He ought to have been better at it.

* * *

He entered his first class that morning with a renewed resolve to improve as a teacher. He firmly forbade himself to dwell on the fact that the year before, Dora would have been beside him because it would have been an Imperius day.

The Hufflepuff fifth years greeted Remus cheerfully, and a chorus of voices asked what spells they'd be studying today.

"We do love the practical lessons," said Hannah Abbott, and the others nodded in agreement. "But are practical lessons enough to prepare us for our OWLs?"

Remus couldn't blame Hannah for doubting that her professor was capable of properly preparing her for the most important examination of her life. Most Defense professors simply weren't. (Remus still felt a bit put-out on behalf of the students who had had Gilderoy Lockhart for a professor in their OWL year. He'd tried to correct the damage for the few students who had chosen to study at the NEWT level, but only so many students were able to make up for so much lost time while balancing their other classes and obligations.)

"There is a practical component to the OWL exam, you know," he told Hannah. "I believe it will be easier for most of you to write about a spell you know how to cast than it would be for you to cast a spell you've written about. That said, you should not neglect your reading and you will have a lengthy essay to write later this week."

Some of the students groaned; others looked relieved.

"Wands out, please," Remus told them, and just then the door opened to admit Dolores Umbridge.

He half-expected his teaching career to end right there.

"Good morning, Professor Lupin," she said. "I apologize for not giving you warning that I would be inspecting you today. I am sorry for the inconvenience."

(The thickest mountain troll on the planet would have realized that she was not sorry. Remus' _desk_ probably realized that she was not sorry, and the desk, being a desk, had no sentience whatsoever.)

"It's no inconvenience at all," said Remus in his most pleasant tones. He hoped his pleasant tones were more convincing than her apologetic tones. "I'm delighted to do whatever I can to help the Ministry in its evaluation."

"Very well. How long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?" She began the interview as if a classroom full of students wasn't listening avidly, if confusedly.

"This is my third year."

"Albus Dumbledore hired you?"

"He did."

"My understanding is that Headmaster Dumbledore found it rather difficult to fill the Defense position, did he not? You were not his first choice for the job, nor his fifth, nor his twentieth."

"The Headmaster did not share that with me. He offered and I accepted."

"Surely you knew that there was extreme turnover in the position. No teacher held the position for more than one year for over three decades."

"That sounds correct," said Remus mildly.

"Until you." Umbridge stared. The students stared.

"That does seem to be the case."

"There are rumors that the job was cursed."

"I've never heard anything to substantiate those rumors," Remus lied placidly. "It may have been just bad luck."

"So you've no idea how it came to be that you, of all people, are the teacher who lasted more than one year in the position. You took no steps to… ensure that you would break the curse?"

"I could hardly do so, not being aware of any particular curse."

She stared at him, as if expecting him to break under her gaze. Indeed, he was in danger of breaking-not in danger of telling her anything, but in danger of letting his distaste for her show. He wanted to glower. He wanted to swear. He wanted to frog march her out of his classroom, _his classroom,_ the place where he did work and was good at it and was able to support himself and be part of the world.

"What were your qualifications before you took the position?"

"I had done some tutoring, of course. A bit of freelance dark creature maintenance."

"You'd never held a steady job."

"This is the longest I have ever held a job, yes."

"Why do you think that is?"

"Because none of my other jobs were as rewarding or as much fun as this one. It's an honor to teach these students."

As if on cue, the class applauded. Remus could have wept with gratitude.

Umbridge whirled to look at the students. "Silence until you are spoken to, please," she commanded in her girlish voice. Most mumbled their apologies; Susan Bones, though, was looking back at Umbridge with an open insolence that surprised Remus.

"So, then," Umbridge continued. "You left your previous positions… voluntarily?"

"When you're hired to capture a grindylow, the job ends when the grindylow is caught. When you're hired to teach a child to read, the job ends when the child can read."

"What about when you're hired to clerk in a jewelry shop, Professor Lupin?" she asked sharply.

So she had researched his employment history on her own. Of course she had. But she didn't know, she couldn't know… or she would have exposed him long before this. "Clerking in a jewelry shop is not nearly as stimulating as inspiring young minds."

"And not nearly as stimulating as operating a dueling club on school grounds?" she asked sweetly.

"I suppose not." He wished fervently that he had never conceived of the idea. He'd begged Harry not to antagonize Umbridge, and then he'd drawn attention to himself.

"What did you hope to achieve by asking the children to attack each other?"

"I hoped that they would hone their spellwork under challenging conditions." It was ridiculously bland. It wasn't bland enough, and he knew it.

"Are you aware that students were injured last night, Professor Lupin?"

"I am aware of no injuries that were not immediately remedied." He was thankful that this was happening in front of a group of fifth years and not a group of sixth years. If he'd had to have this discussion in front of Edward Owens or Lyssa Banks or even Stephanie Wheeler…

For an instant, he disliked himself almost as much as he disliked Umbridge.

She clucked her tongue. "Typical of Dumbledore, I see, allowing his teachers to take such an unconventional approach."

It wasn't unconventional at all. Hogwarts had hosted dueling clubs off and on since the days of the Founders.

"This dueling exercise," she continued. "It was for the students in the fourth through seventh years?"

"Yes."

"And you teach an overview of dark creatures to the third years, I believe."

"You are the son of Lyall Lupin? The great expert in non-human spiritous apparitions?"

"I am."

"He has some rather strong opinions on werewolves as well, does he not?"

Remus' heart pounded. She didn't know anything. She couldn't know anything. His father would never have been foolish enough to say anything, hadn't said anything publicly about werewolves since before Remus' fifth birthday. "His area of expertise is-"

"I am well aware of his area of expertise, but I am not interested in boggarts or poltergeists. I am interested in a story I heard. A story that will take us back many years, to when you and I were mere children."

He would have loved to have pointed out that while he had certainly been a child at the time of the incident in question, he doubted that the same was true of her. But it would have been both petty and dangerous to do anything but nod politely.

"Fenrir Greyback is the werewolf responsible for more carnage than any one individual in a century," she began. "In early 1965, he was captured and brought in to the Control of Magical Creatures department after two Muggle children were found murdered, with the telltale signs of werewolves all around. Greyback denied killing them. He swore he was merely a Muggle tramp and not a wizard. His name was not on the Werewolf Register and he had no wand, but Lyall Lupin thought there were signs in his appearance that he was a werewolf. He told others in the department that they should lock him up until the full moon. The others, quite unjustly, laughed as he told them that werewolves are soulless, evil, and deserving nothing but death. It was only after Greyback escaped that the others realized how right your father was."

It was dizzying to hear the horrible story repeated here, in front of his students, by a woman he despised.

He wanted to scream and rant at Sirius, who was the only person alive he trusted with his screaming and ranting.

Instead, he stood and listened politely.

"You must be very proud of your father," she said.

"I am," he said, and that at least was true. He was proud of his father's intellect. He was proud of his father's ability to admit that he had been wrong. He was proud of the way his father had loved his mother and had never treated her as less-than because she lacked magic. He was proud of the way his father had weathered the storm that came with a lycanthropic son when he could have abandoned Remus to death or to the pack.

"You," said Umbridge, pointing at Ernie MacMillan. "Did you learn about werewolves in your third year?"

"Yes," said Ernie.

"Did you learn how to recognize them?"

"They can be easily distinguished from regular wolves by their shorter snout, more human-like eyes, tufted tail-"

"And when they take their human form?"

"They are often scarred, thin, and dirty. They're sometimes missing teeth. But you can't tell for sure unless it's the full moon. If someone always disappears around the full moon-"

"Very good. What is the best way to kill a werewolf?"

" _Avada Kedavra_ ."

"It seems that your students have managed to learn something despite your ridiculous exercises," said Umbridge.

"Ernie is very bright," said Remus mildly, and Ernie puffed out his chest with pride.

"Professor Lupin is the best Defense professor we've ever had. We're very happy that he's here this year, when we have to take our OWLs."

"Thank you, Ernie," said Remus.

"I daresay you're well prepared if there is a question on werewolves," said Umbridge to Ernie. "Though if I've anything to say about it, you will never need to know. I only visit Hogwarts from time to time, you know, because most of my days are spent at the Ministry drafting legislation to protect children like you. Did you know that it is not technically against the law for a werewolf to walk into this school and begin teaching a class?"

Some of the students gasped. Remus concentrated on his breath and his heart rate and not on which of the students looked most frightened.

"That will be remedied soon," she continued, beaming beatifically at the class. "The Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act will forbid all werewolves from working in any place of business within five miles of a school, a residence, or any place in which underage children may reasonably be expected to congregate."

He remembered that law. He remembered ranting and raving to Sirius in a musty bedroom at Grimmauld Place. Sirius had let him scream himself hoarse before opening a bottle of wine and insisting that the Order needed Remus more than Remus needed to support himself, anyway.

Umbridge continued to talk about the new law until the class ended and the students filed out, bound for Professor Sprout's greenhouses.

"I'm afraid you didn't get to see me teach," Remus said lightly.

"I shall watch twice as carefully next lesson," she replied.

* * *

His next class happened to be Ravenclaw first years. He was more than a little relieved; he did less hands-on magic with the first years so early in the term. He let Professor Flitwick give them a good grounding in charmwork before he began to teach them to use those skills to defend themselves.

The students entered in ones and twos and threes. Remus tried to greet them all by name.

"Good morning, Amanda. Good morning, Jerry. Jennifer, did you remember your book this time? Gus and Jasper and Keaton, please pull those chairs into the circle, thank you. Sarah and Nicole, you seem to have enjoyed Transfiguration this morning…"

"You're very familiar with them," said Umbridge. "Do you always call your students by their given names?"

"Usually," said Remus. "Of course, if the Headmaster asks me to do otherwise, I will do so."

She wrote his answer in her notebook. He regretted implying that Dumbledore was at fault for his teaching methods.

"We're going to review the riddles of the sphinx," he told the class. "You'll have heard some before, but others not. Please take out your quills and write this down…"

Umbridge did not say a word throughout the class, and when it was over, she left without saying goodbye.

It took everything in Remus not to collapse into his chair and bury his head in his hands while he waited for the seventh years. He didn't dare risk letting them duel today, and he knew that some of them would object rather loudly to being asked to remove their books from their bags and take notes.

* * *

The day would have been bad enough had the full moon not been looming later in the week. When his classes were over, Remus escorted himself to Severus' office to await his daily dose of Wolfsbane Potion.

He was reasonably certain that Severus wasn't going to poison him.

He almost wished the man would.

He thought for an instant that he might get his almost-wish when he saw Severus storming toward him, his thin shoulders thrown back and his face twisted into a sneer. If Remus had had the energy, he might have teased Severus about what exactly his last class had done to provoke such a reaction. As it was, he stood quietly and awaited the smoking goblet.

"Come inside and close the door," Severus growled. "I think that that woman is still lurking about."

Oh. It hadn't been the students, then. "She inspected you after she inspected me?"

"It gives me physical pain to say this." He stopped and adjusted the potion, perhaps deciding not to say the painful thing after all. Then his lips parted again, as if unwillingly. "You were right." He ladled the smoking potion into a goblet and handed it to Remus.

Remus took a drink. It was awful, as always. "Right about Umbridge?"

"I would rather put up with you than with her. That's why I didn't want you drinking this in the corridor. She would love to have you removed and take the Defense position herself."

Remus shuddered at the thought, or else he shuddered as the Wolfsbane Potion made its way through his body. "She mentioned wanting the position?"

"Not as such. She asked me repeatedly whether I had applied for the position and been refused. Then she asked me whether I had held leadership positions when I was in school myself- prefect, Head Boy. Horace Slughorn had the good sense to never make her a prefect and she's still angry about it. She enjoys her little legislative triumphs, but not nearly as much as she enjoys coming back to Hogwarts in a position of authority."

Remus didn't believe that Severus had ever voluntarily shared so much information with him so willingly. It was odd, what Dolores Umbridge brought out in people. "They may be one and the same once the Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act passes."

"Are you going to resign like a good little werewolf when that happens?"

"It's up to Dumbledore." If the law was as he remembered it, there were no repercussions for someone who knowingly hired or even concealed a werewolf. The repercussions fell entirely upon the werewolf himself. Dumbledore might prefer that Remus stay at Hogwarts while they searched for the last pieces of Voldemort's soul.

"You would stay, and risk Azkaban?" Severus managed to be scornful of both of Remus' options. "Though Azkaban might not be worse than teaching ninety-five percent of the students in this institution."

Remus swallowed the last of the potion and returned the goblet. "You don't like teaching, Severus?" It was a simple question. It was one he had never much considered in the past, so busy was he with his own challenges.

"I don't like this conversation. Come back tomorrow for your next dose."

Remus nodded and left. His head was pounding and he planned to close himself in his bedroom until he absolutely had to help oversee dinner in the Great Hall.

But thoughts swirled through his mind even in the quiet of his room. It was a nasty irony. Remus, who loved Hogwarts and teaching, was about to be legally barred from them (again). Severus, meanwhile, was bound to stay in Hogwarts with his miserable memories of his school years even though he had no real desire to teach.

Somehow, it had never even occurred to Remus that not everyone enjoyed teaching as much as he did.

"What would you like, Severus?" Remus asked aloud. The empty room gave him a more polite answer than the man would have, but Remus was no more well-informed than he had been a moment before.

He hadn't seen the drama playing out between Edward Owens, Lyssa Banks, and Stephanie Wheeler at the dueling club. He hadn't seen that Severus viewed his position at Hogwarts as a curse, not a blessing. He hadn't seen the true meaning of his memory of the night George Weasley had lost an ear. He hadn't seen the change in Harry when Karkaroff had stolen the diadem. He hadn't even seen that the diadem had been stolen.

There was so much that he did not see, even with his unusual advantage.

(Above all, he hadn't seen Dora for weeks. He hated that.)

**_To be continued._ **

* * *


	65. Tonks Interlude H

That autumn, Tonks counted the days, the hours, the minutes until she would be able to resume full Auror duties.

She missed being in the middle of the action terribly, and every day she fantasized about morphing into one of her colleagues and going out to catch a dark wizard with her bare hands. She got as far as turning herself into Maria Gordon one afternoon, but when she passed Dolores Umbridge in the corridor she realized what a dangerous thing she had nearly done. She ducked into a corner, morphed back into herself, and swore never to think of it again.

Newly single and with a reduced workload, Tonks felt that there were too many hours in each week. Still, she wondered how Umbridge found the time to come by the Auror office almost every shift. She knew that Umbridge was spending significant time at Hogwarts (Tonks would not think about Remus) and that Umbridge was also pushing through anti-werewolf legislation (Tonks would not think about Remus).

The Aurors often could not agree with one another about whether the sun rose in the east. They argued about which investigations should take priority; the best way to approach a dark wizard when there wasn't yet enough evidence to take him into custody; the best way to take a dark wizard into custody when they _did_ have enough evidence; how much evidence they ought to be required to have to bring a dark wizard in; the best way of tracking; the safest way of fighting; where to buy the best curry in London; how the desks in the office ought to be arranged; how much Scrimgeour ought to know about what they were doing; whether Robards would be good at Scrimgeour's job if Scrimgeour decided to have a go at being Minister of Magic; whether Scrimgeour harbored ambitions of becoming Minister of Magic; whether Mad-Eye would ever make his alleged retirement permanent; and whether Dawlish was really as much of an idiot as he sometimes seemed.

However, the Aurors could agree about one thing: they despised Dolores Umbridge. They had no use for her visits to their office and were more than convinced that she had no idea what Aurors actually did. Almost everyone knew a student at Hogwarts- a neighbor, a relative, the child of a friend- and few of the students had anything nice to say about Umbridge, either.

Some of the Aurors thought that werewolves ought to be exterminated but that it wasn't their job to do the exterminating and that Umbridge's time would be better spent lecturing hit wizards and underlings at the Magical Law Enforcement Squad.

Some of the Aurors thought that werewolves ought to be left alone to live their lives unless and until they committed a crime, and that Umbridge's demands were ridiculous and bigoted.

Some of the Aurors didn't care one way or the other about Umbridge's new werewolf initiatives, but didn't want to hear anything about anything from a woman who had never had to fight for her life.

Tonks was, as far as she knew, the only Auror who had to remind herself not to think about Remus Lupin on the first full moon of the Hogwarts term. She reminded herself over and over for a week after the moon had passed. She gave in one evening when she and Sirius were cleaning up the kitchen after eating dinner with her parents.

Sirius' face darkened. "He's convinced that Umbridge knows something. He's probably right, too."

"Has to be suspects, not knows," said Tonks. "If she knew, she'd just expose him right now."

"Not if she wants the legislation to pass first. If she exposes him now, the parents complain and he resigns. If she exposes him later, you and your friends at the Auror Office will personally cart him off to Azkaban."

The thought made her sick. "You're right."

"Unfortunately." Sirius flicked his wand and made the clean dishes stack themselves neatly on their shelf. "Remus insisted on teaching the day after the full moon. It's amazing that he even managed it. When we were younger, sometimes he'd be unconscious for two days after a transformation. Between the Wolfsbane Potion and having his own personal Animagus…" Sirius shrugged. "The improvement is remarkable. He actually does even better when I don't transform. Gives him some peace of mind, I think, at a level he doesn't even acknowledge that he has."

"But he can't stop himself looking like he stayed up all night battling something dangerous."

"No," agreed Sirius. "He can't. If there are students who had their suspicions about his pattern of absences, this won't dissuade them. But I understand that Umbridge wasn't there herself the day after the moon, so if she's just relying on a spy to tell her whether he taught or not, this might buy him another month or two."

"It might buy him right into the new year when the legislation passes."

"We don't know where any of us will be then," said Sirius. Then, clearly knowing that he had nothing reassuring to say, he challenged her to a duel.

The duel took her mind off of the state of the world for forty-five minutes, which was something.

Then she began anew to ignore the fact that she missed doing her job properly and ignore the fact that she missed doing Remus properly. She focused on Tulip's wedding instead.

* * *

Tulip had spent the seven years of her Hogwarts education gleefully making her parents miserable with her incessant need to break every rule anyone attempted to inflict upon her. She had thrived on disruption: she'd released nifflers into the castle, she'd rigged dungbombs to explode at inopportune times, she'd tortured Flich with a fanged frisbee.

Once, in their fifth year, Tulip and Tonks had been studying for their OWLs when they'd quite literally tripped over a couple snogging on the floor of the library's Astronomy section. Madame Pince had thrown them out of the library along with the perpetrators, insisting that they could not have been innocent. Their reputation being what it had been, they could hardly blame Pince for her assumption.

They'd taken the whole incident as a sign that they deserved a break, and they'd sat casually on a little used staircase and eaten chocolate frogs. The subject had turned to romance (as a Ravenclaw, Tulip strongly believed that libraries were not for snogging) and then marriage.

"There's no use trying to stop my parents having the wedding they want for me. A hundred relatives I've never met on Dad's side Apparating in from Turkey. A hundred relatives I've never met on Mum's side Apparating in from Japan. Henna night, ribbons, nuptial cups, origami cranes. I'll be too busy to sabotage it with a magical prank." She grinned. "Will you run down the aisle yelling 'stop the wedding, I'm married to the groom?'"

Tonks choked on her laughter and morphed herself into an approximation of their handsome classmate Barnaby Lee. "No, I'll yell 'stop the wedding, I'm married to the bride!'"

They'd laughed until their sides ached, until they'd nearly fallen down the stairs.

Now the wedding was at hand, and Tulip was a different person. She'd joined the Ministry herself, as she had once sworn that she would never do. And she would have murdered Tonks on the spot if Tonks had interrupted the wedding.

It made Tonks a little bit sad as she wove her way through the crowded church in search of someone she knew. Tulip had been right, years ago, about the throngs of relatives journeying to London from her parents' childhood homes.

She sensed a presence behind her and turned, quickly, wand at the ready. Then she smiled; it was Badeea Ali, who had been one of Tulip's roommates at school. "Isn't it wonderful?" asked Badeea. "So many people from so many places, all wanting to wish Tulip well."

Tonks supposed that it was wonderful.

She thought, but didn't say, that she might prefer it if the majority of guests at her wedding were people she actually knew.

"Penny and I saved you a seat," added Badeea. Badeea, who was an artist, chattered happily about the decorations as she led Tonks up the middle aisle and down the far aisle.

Tonks was relieved to slide into the pew next to Penny. She ought to have been as enthralled by the people and the decorations and the happy energy of the place as Badeea seemed to be. Instead, she wanted to curl up against Penny and wait for the ceremony to be over.

"Remus didn't come with you?" asked Penny.

Right. Tonks hadn't bothered telling Penny or Tulip that she and Remus had broken up. "There wouldn't be any reason for him to come," she said as casually as she could. "As I dumped him. He… we just weren't compatible after all."

"I'm so sorry," said Penny, and she hugged Tonks. Badeea, who hadn't known anything about Remus in the first place, hugged Tonks and said she was sorry, too.

"Thank you. But today is about Tulip, isn't it?"

They agreed that it was, and talk about the pretty decorations and the people who had traveled such great distances resumed.

Tulip looked beautiful; there was no denying that.

When the officiant asked Tulip whether she pledged herself to Ayberk, she wiggled her eyebrows at her audience before agreeing that she did. Everyone laughed. Tonks laughed along with them; it was good to know that Tulip was still Tulip.

The reception was better than the ceremony. She and Badeea and Penny ate and drank and danced.

(There was a certain awkwardness to dancing with Ayberk's friends from Durmstrang. She'd killed their Headmaster, after all. They were all too tactful to mention it, and in return she tried to step on their feet as little as possible.)

Tulip joined her friends as soon as she could.

"Where's Remus?" asked Tulip, dragging Tonks aside.

"It's your wedding. Don't you have more important things to-"

"No," said Tulip, who was not going to let Tonks off so easily.

"I imagine he's at Hogwarts. I think they have a Quidditch match this weekend."

Tulip stood with her hands on her hips and glared.

Tonks tried not to sigh. "I dumped him. I found out something about him that was a deal-breaker for me."

"Did he kill his first wife?"

"No!"

Tulip shrugged. "He always seemed like he had a secret."

"I know his secret and that isn't it."

"But it was bad enough for you to chuck him?"

"It's not bad."

"You might as well tell me," said Tulip. "I love mysteries. I love mysteries so much I joined the Ministry because the best mysteries are there."

Ayberk appeared behind Tulip. "Dance with your husband," said Tonks. There was a shock of pain somewhere in her chest. All she had to do was say the word, and she would be able to dance with the man she loved, too. He'd probably even marry her at the soonest opportunity.

"This isn't over," said Tulip, but Tulip had dozens of relatives to thank for attending her wedding and dozens of Ayberk's school friends to meet. So it was, indeed, over for that night at least.

* * *

Tonks made a point of visiting Sirius on Halloween. His hair had grown long enough to graze his shoulders and his eyes were terribly shadowed.

He didn't smile when she told him that Tulip was back to implying that Remus had murdered the first love of his life. She knew he'd thought it hilarious the first time she'd told him Tulip's theory; he'd choked on his wine at Christmas dinner.

Then she remembered that today was the anniversary of one of his best friends facilitating the murder of two others and realized that she'd definitely told the wrong joke.

"Do you want to duel?" she asked. They always dueled when one or both of them felt horrible.

"No."

Of course he didn't. It was nearly the anniversary of the day he'd been thrown in prison without a trial for supposedly killing one of his best friends, and a host of bystanders, in a duel.

"What can I do?" she asked at last.

"Shutting up would be brilliant," he said.

So she shut up, but since he hadn't told her to leave, she didn't leave.

She found the Weasley twins' stash of products and spent the afternoon admiring their ingenuity.

Some hours later, Harry arrived, having snuck out of school to visit Sirius.

Assuming that Sirius would rather have Harry's company than hers, Tonks made to slip out the door, but to her surprise Sirius asked her to stay. So she and Harry quietly played chess all night while Sirius stared at them with a haunted, hungry look in his eyes.

* * *

November dawned terribly, unseasonably cold, but Tonks didn't care.

Her suspension was over and she was a real Auror again. She relished the long hours spent tracking illegal goods and Dark wizards. Her blood sang with power and delight the day she and Kingsley arrested a witch who had owled a particularly nasty curse to the Muggle Prime Minister; it was something to do with the resignation of the Secretary of State for Wales, a party leadership election, and the privatization of British Rail.

She loved her job again even when she was in the office. Late one afternoon, Maria Gordon set her radio to play a marathon of Muggle Christmas music. Tonks quite enjoyed it; thanks to her Muggle-born father, she had grown up hearing many of the songs.

"This one is new," said Maria. "Very popular with Muggles." And Tonks stopped to listen.

_… I don't want a lot for Christmas_

_There is just one thing I need, and I_

_Don't care about the presents_

_Underneath the Christmas tree_

_I don't need to hang my stocking_

_There upon the fireplace_

_Santa Claus won't make me happy_

_With a toy on Christmas day_

_I just want you for my own_

_More than you could ever know_

_Make my wish come true_

_All I want for Christmas is you…_

"It's catchy," Tonks told Maria, and the two of them had started to sing along when the sound of a throat clearing behind them made Maria hasten to turn off the radio.

"Hem hem."

It was Undersecretary Umbridge.

"Auror Tonks," said Umbridge in sickeningly sweet tones, "I would have thought that you would have learned more from your suspension."

"I wasn't suspended for singing along with the radio."

"You claimed that you mended your ways," said Umbridge even though Tonks had never claimed any such thing. "You claimed that you were eager to return to duty. And yet, rather than work to protect the wizarding population of Britain, you chose to listen to… Muggle music. Thankfully Auror Gordon was here to remind you of your duties."

Tonks waited for Maria to admit that the radio, and the choice of song, had been hers. Maria had ambitions of moving out of the Auror office and into an Undersecretary position. Tonks didn't understand Maria and she didn't always like her, but she didn't think Maria would let a fellow Auror take the blame for something that she had done. Aurors didn't treat each other that way. Aurors needed to trust one another in life or death situations.

"I was the one who asked Auror Tonks to listen to the song," confessed Maria after far too long a wait. But at least she had done it.

"Auror Gordon thought it was necessary for me to keep up to date on Muggles," added Tonks, more to annoy Umbridge than because she thought Umbridge had any business telling her what she could and could not do. The Auror office was Scrimgeour's domain, and Scrimgeour didn't waste his time worrying about his subordinates' taste in music. "Auror Shacklebolt and I just had an assignment involving the Muggle Prime Minister, and we did our job to the letter of the law."

"Laws can be changed."

Laws like the Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

"Yes," said Tonks. "My distant cousin Araminta Meliflua Black once tried to pass a law to make Muggle-hunting legal."

Umbridge's eyes flashed with ill-concealed fury, and Tonks remembered the day Remus had confirmed what Tonks had already known.

_The woman is a menace. You've met her. You know that she is a cruel, heartless, vindictive, bigoted, vile piece of filth who will abuse her power at every turn and never let a slight be forgotten. She does not believe in forgiveness or compassion or duty. She does not believe that other sentient beings are deserving of fairness or dignity. She is a danger to you because you are the embodiment of everything that frightens her. You celebrate differences instead of fearing them. You can trace your bloodline for centuries, but you don't care to because you believe in yourself and don't need to rely on who your great-great-grandfather may have been to believe that your own life is worth living._

"Of course," added Tonks, pretending that she hadn't noticed Umbridge's reaction, "you get all sorts when you can trace your bloodline back for centuries. My great-great-great grandfather Phineas Nigellus Black was Headmaster at Hogwarts. Isn't that interesting?"

Just for fun, she didn't qualify Phineas Nigellus Black's title with _least popular in history_ the way Sirius always did.

"I'm certain your ancestors were powerful people as well," she continued. "Remind me what your father did?"

Before Umbridge could stumble through her usual lies about how her father had most certainly not been the man who mopped the Ministry's floors, Kingsley crossed the room in two long strides. "Auror Tonks, Auror Proudfoot has a question for us about the Muggle Prime Minister. It's rather urgent. Please excuse us, Undersecretary."

And all of a sudden, Tonks found herself sequestered with Kingsley in a back room. "You're one of my favorite people in the Auror Office and I'd prefer it if you didn't encourage that sycophant Umbridge to beg Fudge to have you sacked," he said bluntly.

Tonks would have blushed if she hadn't morphed, ever so subtly, to keep her cheeks pale and unconcerned. "Interrupting me when I start to have too much fun with Umbridge is usually Mad-Eye's job."

"Mad-Eye is half-retired. I thought he could use the help."

It was sweet, really, even if she had been enjoying watching Umbridge get more and more angry at the idea that the pink-haired junior Auror with the Muggle surname had a better claim to ancient wizarding nobility than Umbridge herself did. "Want to come to dinner with my family tonight? Mad-Eye comes sometimes, but this week it will only be my parents and me and my cousin Sirius."

"I doubt that your cousin Sirius wants to see me. I was the one who took him back to Azkaban after he turned himself in. Escorted him to his trial and bound him to the witness chair."

"Sirius won't hold you doing your job against you. I reckon he'll like you because Remus Lupin does."

"All right, then." Kingsley smiled. "As long as your mum doesn't mind last minute guests."

"She loves them, actually. Come on, we'll take the Floo since you don't know the Apparition point."

* * *

On the one hand, Tonks was right about Andromeda and Sirius. Andromeda loved unexpected guests. Sirius didn't hide his respect for Kingsley.

On the other hand, Tonks underestimated just how appalled Andromeda and Sirius would be when they learned that she had publicly acknowledged her Black lineage.

No, not acknowledged. Bragged about.

"It's not as if I believe it makes me superior!" she snapped when she tired of Sirius and Andromeda looking at each other sideways. "That was the point! Umbridge is every kind of bigot. She's a blood purist who can't attack Muggle-borns in the current political climate, so she goes after werewolves because people don't know them, or don't know they know them. It's not socially acceptable to say she's superior to a Muggle-born, but at least she gets to pass legislation to remind werewolves that they're worthless. So I made her feel worthless, just for a second, and I enjoyed it! I…"

She trailed off as she finally realized what she was saying. She'd been ashamed of her extended family ever since she'd been old enough to know what it meant that Bellatrix Lestrange was her aunt.

Her fierce pride in her father had never wavered. He had entered a new world at the age of eleven, and he had navigated it brilliantly. Strangers walked away from a ten-second conversation with him smiling with delight. Everyone who came in contact with Ted Tonks, however briefly, came away happier.

 _That_ was her Muggle-born father.

Blood and lineage were the stupidest possible ways of measuring a person's worth.

Her eyes threatened to fill with tears. "I don't know why I said it."

"Dolores Umbridge does strange things to people," said Kingsley in his deep, soothing voice.

"That she does," said Sirius. "Have you ever heard Remus talk about anyone else the way he talks about her?"

"Thank you again for saving me from myself," said Tonks to Kingsley.

"My pleasure. I won't say I didn't enjoy any part of it. I simply think that you need more plausible deniability when you rebel against the Undersecretary."

That took Tonks by surprise. Kingsley had never struck her as particularly devious. "Do you suggest anything in particular, Auror Shacklebolt?"

"I suggest setting up a radio frequency to play that song on a loop at all times in the main Auror office. Those of us who belong there can use a spell to stop us hearing that particular frequency. But every time an unwelcome guest darkens our door, she will be forced to partake of the latest in Muggle holiday cheer."

Sirius laughed darkly in the way he only did when he was truly impressed.

Tonks vowed to never, ever underestimate Kingsley again.

Andromeda, after a long moment, declared that she wanted to hear the song, and Ted offered to Apparate to a Muggle shop to purchase it. They agreed that he should go, and he was back within ten minutes, waving a brightly colored disc over his head.

"It's the latest in Muggle musical technology," Ted told Kingsley and Sirius. "We have a Muggle CD player- a gift from a Muggle cousin of mine who thinks I'm rather eccentric, choosing to live with one foot in the last century. The bloke at the shop says it's the most popular new Christmas song in years, but it peaked at number two last December. Didn't get the big Christmas Number One because of East 17's _Stay Another Day_ ."

Tonks was the only one in the room who really understood what her father was saying about the UK Singles Chart, but it didn't matter. Everyone was too eager to listen, and in a moment the song began.

_I don't want a lot for Christmas_

_There is just one thing I need, and I_

_Don't care about the presents_

_Underneath the Christmas tree_

_I don't need to hang my stocking_

_There upon the fireplace_

_Santa Claus won't make me happy_

_With a toy on Christmas day_

_I just want you for my own_

_More than you could ever know_

_Make my wish come true_

_All I want for Christmas is you…_

"That's rather sweet," said Andromeda when the song had finished. She looked at Ted with love that made Tonks' own heart hurt. "It reminds me of the Christmases when I thought I would never be able to have you. It reminds me never to take you for granted now that I do have you."

Tonks lowered her eyes. She was glad that her parents were still in love after so many years. She didn't necessarily need to watch them kiss.

The song chased itself through her head for the rest of the night, and she was careful not to let herself be left alone with Sirius, who would doubtless feel the need to ask whether there wasn't someone she wanted for Christmas.

One Christmas before, she'd pulled Remus Lupin out of the Yule Ball and kissed him.

So much could change in a year.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: "All I Want for Christmas Is You" was first recorded by Mariah Carey, who co-wrote and co-produced it with Walter Afanasieff. Badeea Ali-- like Tulip, Barnaby, Penny, and Jae-- is one of Tonks' classmates in Jam City's Hogwarts Mystery game.


	66. Harry and the Hufflepuffs

Harry was having a very good start to the school year.

Although the professors were assigning the fifth-years impossible amounts of homework in preparation for the OWL exams, Harry found it easier to keep up with his classes than he ever had before. Probably, he reflected wryly, it had something to do with the fact that this year no one was threatening to kill him. Having someone who was sort of like a parent taking an interest in whether he did his schoolwork was motivating, too.

Even better was the return of Quidditch. Few things made Harry as happy as flying with his teammates. Ron had successfully become the Gryffindor team's new Keeper, and even though Ron was struggling to adjust to the pressure, the team had managed to defeat Slytherin in the first match of the year. That Harry had grabbed the Snitch a breath before Draco Malfoy would have got it made the victory all the sweeter.

It even turned out not to be so terrible that Ron and Hermione were busy with prefect duties sometimes. And so he did not mind at all that one Wednesday morning he found himself sitting with Ginny at breakfast, speculating about the likely outcome of the upcoming Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw match, while Ron and Hermione did an early patrol of the castle.

At least, he didn't mind at all until Ron appeared so suddenly that he might have Apparated and grabbed Harry by the back of his robes, almost making Harry choke on his toast.

"You have to come. Now," said Ron. Harry turned to say goodbye to Ginny, but even that was too much for Ron, who seized Harry's arm with one hand and his bag with the other. "Prefect emergency!"

Something about how frantic Ron looked- flushed and jumpy- made Harry bite back on his usual retort that _he_ wasn't a prefect because he caused too much trouble. Panic began to grow in his chest as he matched Ron stride for stride. They sprinted from the Great Hall and up a towering flight of stairs, jumping from one staircase to another as the first began to move.

"What happened?" asked Harry breathlessly when he was no longer in danger of tumbling from the staircase.

"They know about Lupin."

Harry's heart plummeted. "Who?"

"Ernie Macmillan worked it out. That cow Umbridge asked him a bunch of questions about werewolves right in the middle of Lupin's class and it made him realize what was going on. I don't know how many people he's told so far, but he and Hannah are going to go see Dumbledore today. Hermione and I told him Dumbledore already knows and they didn't believe us. Ernie says everyone has a right to know and he's going to tell. Says it's his duty as a prefect. Says he'll complain to Umbridge if there's no point in going to Dumbledore. Hermione's trying to convince him that we need Lupin to prepare us for our OWLs in the spring, but it's not working. I think he's embarrassed that Hermione worked out the truth two whole years before he did. I can't get through to him. She can't get through to him. It has to be you, Harry."

"Why would he listen to me?"

"He likes you. You're the famous Boy Who Lived and whatever. And you're friends with Saint Champion Cedric Diggory."

That was it, Harry realized as they jogged up to Hannah, Hermione, and Ernie. It wasn't Harry who would be able to stop Ernie and Hannah. It was Cedric. He just had to stop them from spreading the word before he could convince Cedric that Lupin's secret had to stay a secret.

"… it isn't right. Students are in danger and they don't even know it. You can decide for yourself that you want a werewolf for a teacher, but you can't decide for everyone else," Ernie was saying as Harry drew into earshot.

"They let us choose whether we wanted to take practical lessons about the Imperius Curse," added Hannah. "They should let us choose whether we want to be at a school with a monster."

"He's not a monster!" said Harry before he even said hello, before he had a chance to consider what strategy might work best to bring Ernie and Hannah around to his way of thinking.

"Then why do werewolves have five Xs in _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ ?" Hannah shot back. Harry didn't think he'd ever heard Hannah sound so loudly sure of herself before. From what little he knew of her, she'd always seemed to listen to Ernie or to Susan Bones before she listened to herself. He wished that she hadn't chosen this moment to become so confident in her own convictions.

"There's a footnote that says that only applies on the night of the full moon," Harry pointed out. He'd reread the entry on werewolves several times at the end of his third year after Lupin himself had pointed out that his friendship with Sirius might negatively affect Sirius' chances in front of the Wizengamot. "'When there is no full moon, the werewolf is as harmless as any other human.' Page 41," he quoted.

(Hermione beamed a little, the way she often did when Harry proved that he had voluntarily read something that wasn't about Quidditch.)

"But there is a full moon," said Ernie. "There are ten full moons during the school year. Anyway, Harry, this a matter for prefects-"

"So the next step is to talk to the Head Boy," Harry interrupted.

Hannah and Ernie glanced at each other. They both revered Cedric; neither one of them wanted to go over his head.

"I want to talk to Cedric, too. He's my friend, and a prefect can't tell me not to talk to my friend."

It was nearly time for the first classes of the morning to start. "Get Cedric, will you?" he asked Ron and Hermione. "He should be leaving the Great Hall."

"We can get him ourselves," declared Hannah possessively. They all started toward the Great Hall, Ron and Hermione rushing ahead. In the end, Hermione had to scream Cedric's name in a rather undignified way across the hall. Harry imagined that Hermione thought that looking like an idiot for a moment would be a small price to pay for keeping Lupin as a teacher.

Cedric greeted them pleasantly. It appeared that he could not decide whether to laugh or be concerned at their disheveled state.

"I have Arithmancy starting in about a minute," Hermione said. "And the two of you need to be in Divination…"

"Go to Arithmancy," Harry agreed, knowing how Hermione hated to miss a class for anything less than petrification by a basilisk. "I'll handle this. Ron can tell Professor Trelawny that she must have foreseen that I would fall on the moving staircase this morning and hurt my leg."

"You didn't fall and hurt your leg."

"I almost did." Harry shrugged at Ron, who grinned.

"Good enough for me." Ron caught his eye and Harry could tell that Ron was offering to stay- wanted to stay- but Harry suddenly knew that it would be easier to make his point if he let himself be outnumbered. He nodded to Ron, and Ron began the long climb to the Divination classroom.

Whatever classes Ernie and Hannah had that morning, they made no mention of attending them. Instead, they fell upon Cedric, entreating him to take their part.

"It isn't fair for the Gryffindors to make the rules for the whole school!"

"It's dangerous! We had a right to know!"

"Hermione Granger has known for two whole years, and she covered it up!"

"I don't like Umbridge, either, but that law has support for a reason!"

_"A werewolf. A WEREWOLF!"_

Harry flinched. "Can we please discuss this in private? Even if I can't stop you telling the whole school, you shouldn't tell them like this. If… if there's some kind of mob seeking justice… you wouldn't want a first-year to be caught in the crossfire even if you don't care what happens to Lupin."

"We didn't say _that_ ," said Hannah, and Harry felt a spark of hope.

"Let's move this conversation somewhere more comfortable," said Cedric. Harry thought that he knew Cedric well enough to know that what Cedric really wanted was a moment to think before their discussion began in earnest. By silent agreement, Cedric, Hannah, and Ernie turned left and then right. Harry followed.

Harry had been down this corridor many times before; it led to the kitchens, which anyone could enter by tickling the pear in a still life painting. Dobby had told Harry that he was permitted to visit at any time, and indeed Harry and Ron were always welcomed to the kitchens with more food than they could carry, let alone eat.

"All right," said Cedric, seeming to make a decision. He aimed his wand at Harry. " _Obscuro_ ." Harry stiffened as a blindfold fastened itself neatly around his head, pressing his glasses into his nose a bit too tightly.

With some discomfort, Harry realized that it had been almost exactly one year before when Karkaroff had rendered him immobile and invisible before depositing him in this corridor and removing his memory.

He stood dumbly in the darkness as he heard what sounded like the rap of a wand against a wooden barrel- wasn't there a pile of barrels stacked in the shadowy indentation on the right-hand side of the corridor? Ron had once speculated that the barrels might contain a delivery of fire whiskey that hadn't yet been stored properly. They had meant to come back and check at a later date, but piles of homework and Quidditch practice had pushed the idea to the back of their minds.

Harry realized now that the barrels weren't storage at all. They concealed the entrance to the Hufflepuff dormitory, and tapping on them in a particular way opened the door. That was what Tonks had meant in the spring when she'd told Harry that Hufflepuffs didn't use a password to enter their common room.

"Come on," said Cedric, and he grabbed Harry by the shoulder to lead him through a doorway and up a sloping, earthy passage.

"If you're going to leave the blindfold on, can you let me take my glasses off and then cover my eyes?" asked Harry. The blindfold wasn't really so uncomfortable, but Harry hoped that Cedric would decide that it wouldn't hurt anything to let Harry see the inside of the common room as long as Harry didn't know how to return.

He was worried about Lupin, but he was also terribly curious and excited to see where the Hufflepuffs lived.

Cedric seemed to have a silent conversation with Ernie and Hannah. " _Finite Incantantem_ ." The blindfold vanished.

"Wow," Harry breathed before he'd decided whether he ought to say anything.

They were inside a cosy, round, low-ceilinged room reminiscent of a badger's sett. It was decorated in Hufflepuff House's cheerful, bee-like colors of yellow and black. The tables were made from highly polished, honey-colored wood, as were two round doors which Harry assumed led to the dormitories. The yellow and brown rug beneath his feet was soft, he could tell even through his shoes. The over-stuffed couches and chairs looked equally inviting.

Fittingly, because Professor Sprout was the Head of Hufflepuff House, the common room was full of plants and flowers. There were various cacti growing on wooden circular shelves (curved to fit the walls). Many of them seemed to be waving hello to Harry. Ferns and ivies suspended from the celling brushed his hair as he passed under them.

A portrait over the wooden mantelpiece (carved all over with decorative dancing badgers) showed Helga Hufflepuff toasting her students with a tiny, two-handled golden cup that Harry recognized as the one Dumbledore and Lupin had destroyed before the term began.

Another portrait to the side of the fireplace showed Newt Scamander, the famed magizoologist and the author of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ . A bowtruckle was perched shyly on his left shoulder and a niffler grinned mischievously from its place on his right arm.

There were Christmas stockings hung all along the fireplace and beside and around the portraits. Each stocking was yellow and black, but there the similarities ended: some were made in broad stripes, and some in narrow stripes; some were polka dotted, and some checked; others featured the outlines of badgers in various poses. It looked as if each student in Hufflepuff had a stocking of his or her own.

A Christmas tree, too, stood near the passageway through which they had entered. The tree was decorated with golden garlands and badger-shaped ornaments. Beneath the tree were dozens of black-wrapped packages tied up with yellow ribbon.

There were many small, round windows just level with the ground at the foot of the castle. Just now the windows were covered with snow- and yet, somehow, the room felt sunny.

"It's brilliant," he said when he realized that the other three were all waiting for his reaction. They glowed with pride at the simple praise.

"Not like Gryffindor Tower at all, I wouldn't reckon," said Ernie.

"No," said Harry honestly. "We'd kill the plants setting off dungbombs and we'd probably blow up the presents by accident, too."

Cedric and Ernie laughed. Hannah smiled.

"You really don't have a password?" Harry asked.

"No, but if you try to come in and you don't belong, you'll be drenched with vinegar," explained Hannah.

Harry nodded, thinking of how precise Cedric's tapping had been. Somehow the lack of password fit. "Is everyone else in class?"

"They're certainly meant to be." Cedric seated himself on a couch beside the fire and gestured for Harry to sit as well. Hannah and Ernie pulled a pair of chairs as close as they could.

"Now," said Cedric. "Ernie and Hannah, tell me what's going on. Harry, wait for your turn."

Harry couldn't help but feel put-out at the idea of waiting. Who else had Ernie told? Who were those people telling, even now? If anyone told Draco Malfoy and his cronies, it wouldn't matter what the Hufflepuffs ultimately decided. Malfoy would get rid of Lupin just to make Harry unhappy.

Or what about Zacharias Smith? He was a Hufflepuff, and he was insufferable. According to Ginny, he was exactly the kind of person who would love the get Lupin sacked and wouldn't feel one bit bad about it.

"… And all of the students should have a right to decide whether that's a risk they want to take," Ernie concluded after what seemed to Harry to have been an hour, but had probably been more like five minutes.

"Thank you," said Cedric politely. "It's your turn, Harry." Harry was oddly reminded of Lupin and the quiet way he controlled a classroom (or a murderous confrontation in the Shrieking Shack). That thought told Harry where to start.

"Professor Lupin is one of the best professors in the school, and he's definitely the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we've ever had. You know that. When you were the Triwizard Champion, Cedric, you could have chosen any professor in the school to prepare you and give you extra lessons. You chose Lupin."

"I don't believe Professor Lupin's skill as a teacher is at issue here, Harry."

"If it's not, then it should be. It should be the only thing that matters. The students don't need to know about his- his problem- any more than we need to know why Snape's hair always looks greasy or whether Pince has bunions or whether McGonagall is allergic to treacle tart."

"None of those things put the students in any danger."

"Nor does Lupin. Snape makes him a Wolfsbane potion so he doesn't lose his mind. My godfather- he's an Animagus and he can take his dog form and control Lupin even if Lupin does forget the potion and lose his mind. Dumbledore and the rest of the staff decided that it was safe for Lupin to be here."

"We don't know if the staff even know," injected Ernie.

"They do. Most of them taught him when he was a student. The Whomping Willow was planted to keep him separate from the other students when he was at school, and Professor Sprout knows that. She had to. We do all sorts of dangerous things that the professors decided we should do. You can get hurt flying, but we still taking flying class."

"That's very true," said Cedric.

"It's not the same," said Ernie. "Our parents know about flying class, and if they really wanted us excused from it they could work something out, even if it meant choosing another school. They don't know about Lupin. If they did, some of them would want us to leave the school. Not that it would come to that, because that new law-"

"Disgusting bigoted law that shouldn't pass," said Harry.

"That's not up to you," said Hannah. "And neither is this. You decided that you wanted to take the risk of having Lupin as a professor-"

"He's a lot less dangerous than Quirrell or Lockhart-"

"But no one else got to make that decision."

"So you're going to get Lupin sacked or arrested, and no one else gets to decide that they'd like him to stay on? Maybe Hermione isn't the only one who guessed two years ago. Maybe loads of other students did, but they decided that it was none of their business."

"I should tell you that that is the case," said Cedric.

It took Harry a moment to process that. Deep down, he hadn't really believed that anyone else could have done what Hermione had; Hermione was just that much cleverer, and that much harder-working, than everyone else.

"Did you know before today?" Harry asked Cedric.

"I'm afraid I didn't work it out myself," said Cedric, looking slightly abashed. "Cho told me. She thinks about half of Ravenclaw house knows. Some of the older students had a debate about it last year when they were locked out of their common room in the middle of the night."

Even though Harry had long since given up on the idea that Cho could ever fancy him, he felt a sudden desire to have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, to have been there with Cho in the middle of the night…

"You don't think we should tell, then," said Hannah.

"I think it's up to you to decide what's right. But I hope you won't tell."

Now Harry's insides were leaping about with delight. What Cedric had just said to Hannah and Ernie, both of whom idolized him, would be far more effective at keeping them quiet than a demand would have done. Only a memory charm would have worked better, and Harry had no fondness for memory charms.

* * *

When he'd shaken hands with Ernie and Hannah and been escorted out of the Hufflepuffs' home, he ran as fast as he could to Gryffindor Tower to retrieve his invisibility cloak and the Marauder's Map. He knew that Lupin would be teaching and he couldn't interrupt his class to warn him of the morning's events, but he could tell Lupin that it was an emergency and they had to speak in between classes.

Even though Ernie and Hannah no longer planned to tell everyone they met that Lupin was a werwolf, Lupin had to know that they knew. And Cedric, too. And Cho and… half of Ravenclaw?

Safely under his invisibility cloak, where he was in no danger of facing irritating questions about why he wasn't in class, he found himself drifting toward Ravenclaw Tower. He had to know more about what the Ravenclaws knew; how else could he properly warn Lupin?

He began to climb a spiral staircase that ended before a door. There was no handle and no keyhole: nothing but a plain expanse of aged wood and a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle.

He imagined Cho and her friends sitting on these steps, talking about whether Lupin was a werewolf.

Locked out, Cedric had said. That meant that they couldn't simply tap the knocker in a certain way like Hufflepuffs tapped the barrels in a certain way. Did the knocker require a password, then, like the Fat Lady in Gryffindor Tower or the stretch of stone wall alongside the Slytherin common room?

There was one way to find out. Harry reached for the knocker and rapped it once. The beak of the eagle opened, but instead of a bird's call, a soft, musical voice said, "What can you break, even if you never pick it up or touch it?"

Harry happened to know the answer, but only because Lupin had made Cedric run through famous riddles before the final task of the Triwizard Tournament so that Cedric would be prepared if he had to face a sphinx.

"A promise," he told the knocker, feeling very odd about all of this.

"Succinctly put," replied the knocker, and the door swung open.

For the second time that morning, Harry was amazed by how wonderful the castle could be. The Ravenclaw common room was a wide, circular room, airier than any Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts. Graceful arched windows punctuated the walls, which were hung with blue and bronze silks. The windows gave the Ravenclaws a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains. The ceiling was domed and painted with stars, which were echoed in the midnight blue carpet. There were tables, chairs, and bookcases, and in a niche opposite the door stood a tall statue of white marble.

Harry's knees turned to water and his hands went so numb that he dropped the map. On the head of the statue was a much-too-familiar diadem, for this was Rowena Ravenclaw.

"Hello?" asked a high voice. Harry was not alone in the room, and while he was invisible, the map was not. He couldn't risk another student picking up the map; far better to be caught in another house's common room without invitation. Quickly, he removed the invisibility cloak and shoved it under his robes. He just managed it before Luna Lovegood came into view.

He breathed a sigh of relief. It was someone he knew. "Hello, Luna," he said as he picked up the map, which had tumbled toward her bare feet.

"You're not in Ravenclaw," she said.

"No," he agreed. "But the door opened for me when I answered a question."

"Then you must be clever," she said. "Did the Sorting Hat consider putting you in Ravenclaw?"

"No," he said. "Er, I mean, I'm not certain." At the time, all he'd cared about was not Slytherin, but he did remember the hat saying something about not a bad mind.

"No," echoed Luna. "I suppose none of us know exactly what the Sorting Hat considers. We only know what it chooses to tell us."

"And people have a right to choose what to tell other people," Harry said, reminding himself of why he'd come. If he had expected to find a roll of parchment stuck to one of the bookcases declaring PROFESSOR LUPIN IS A WEREWOLF, he was disappointed.

Luna nodded as if his change of subject made complete sense, then changed the subject again. "You're supposed to be in class."

"So are you."

She looked down at her bare feet. "I've lost my shoes. People take them and hide them, you know."

Harry hadn't known anything of the kind. He had never heard of such a thing. He'd once borrowed one of Ron's ties in a pinch, and he knew many of the girls shared clothes (Alicia and Angelina probably couldn't have sorted out who was the original owner of what if the Quidditch Cup depended on it).

"Do you want help finding them?" he asked. "You can't go to class barefoot. There's snow on the ground. And you can't stay up here forever either."

"I suppose you're right," she said. "I just thought it would be more expedient to miss class today so that they didn't feel like they'd hid them for nothing and they wouldn't try something more creative next time."

"How come people hide your stuff?"

"I think they think I'm a bit odd. They call me Loony Lovegood."

"Sounds like the same people who called me the Heir of Slytherin and said I wanted to murder Muggle borns," said Harry darkly. "Have you tried a summoning charm?"

"I haven't learned that yet. Professor Flitwick says we'll be doing it next week."

Harry nodded and raised his wand. "Accio, Luna's shoes!"

Three pairs of shoes flew out from behind a row of books on one of the bookcases.

"Thank you." Luna set two pairs of shoes aside and sat down to pull the third pair onto her feet.

"Does Professor Flitwick know about this?" Harry asked.

"No." Harry understood. A year ago, he wouldn't have bothered going to a professor with a problem, either.

"Is it all right if I speak to…" To whom? Flitwick, who he barely knew? Lupin, who was on the verge of being sacked? Dumbledore, who didn't mind when Snape bullied Neville so badly that Neville saw him in a boggart?

"You don't need to speak to anyone. They'll only ask who, and I don't know for sure, so they can't do anything even if they want to. But thank you." Luna returned her spare shoes to their hiding place and slung her bag over her shoulder. "I have Defense Against the Dark Arts next, and I wouldn't want to miss it. Professor Lupin is very nice, isn't he?"

"I like him, too." Harry's heart pounded. It was the perfect opportunity. "Luna, have you ever heard the Ravenclaws around here saying anything… odd about Professor Lupin?"

"I'm not a very good judge of what's odd and what isn't. Many things that I think are normal, other people seem to find odd."

That was true enough. "Have they ever talked about how he often seems to be ill?"

"Oh, you mean that he's a werewolf? Yes, everyone knows that, but I don't imagine that's any of our business, do you?"

"No," said Harry. "I don't imagine it is. I'll walk you to the Defense classroom. I want to talk to Lupin before your class, anyway."

"That would be nice." Luna waved her wand, and the door with the brass knocker opened.

"And when you get a chance, Luna, can you draw me a picture of your dormitory? Where your trunk is, where your bed is, where your things are? And then let me know the next time something goes missing? I think I may have a way to figure out who's doing it." He didn't fancy spending all night staring at the Ravenclaw dormitory on the Marauder's Map, but it was the best plan he had.

"All right. I'm not a bad artist. I can do that."

"Can anyone walk into your dormitory the same way anyone can walk into your common room?"

"Only girls. The stairs turn into a slide if boys try to come up to the girls' dormitory."

That, at least, was familiar. "They do the same thing in Gryffindor Tower."

"I wouldn't like to be a Gryffindor," said Luna. "Ginny says that there aren't any riddles to answer to get inside, and that you can't see the mountains from the common room. What's the point of being in a tower if you can't feel as if you're in the clouds?"

They had reached the classroom; Lupin's first class of the day was streaming out, chattering excitedly. Luna's classmates began making their way inside. To Harry's surprise, Dumbledore was among them.

Dumbledore, though, did not appear to be surprised to find Harry in the midst of the fourth year Ravenclaws. He merely glanced in Harry's direction before addressing Lupin. "I wonder if you could set these students something to read, on threat of a quiz the moment you return?"

Lupin nodded; with a tap of his wand, the reading assignment appeared on the blackboard. The Ravenclaws fell quietly to work and Lupin left the room. His face fell into lines of concern when he saw Harry. "Harry? What's wrong?"

Harry cast the anti-eavesdropping charm he had seen Lupin cast many times. "Cedric got the Hufflepuffs to promise not to tell for now, but half the school knows and I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep it a secret from that Umbridge cow."

"I'm certain you meant to say High Inquisitor Umbridge," said Dumbledore blandly.

"Yes," Harry corrected himself, straightening his back. "This morning, Ernie Macmillan wanted to tell both you and High Inquisitor Umbridge that Professor Lupin is a werewolf. I asked him to wait until he'd talked to Cedric. Cedric convinced him not to do anything, but loads of other people know. We think no one is going to say anything- either because they respect Cedric or because think Professor Lupin can prepare them for their OWLS and NEWTS or because they just don't care- but sooner or later someone will slip up or someone who wants Professor Lupin to be sacked will overhear."

"I've always been on borrowed time in this position, Harry," said Remus with a soft smile. "We've talked about it before. But thank you for trying to give me me another day, at least. Headmaster? Is that why you wanted to see me?"

"It's lucky Mr. Potter was here, for he phrased it far more colorfully than I would have," said Dumbledore. "Yes, Mr. Diggory came to me in his capacity as Head Boy not half an hour ago to tell me the same story."

"I shall return to my class, then," said Lupin.

"And Mr. Potter will accompany me to my office to further discuss his forays into both the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw common rooms," said Dumbledore. "All he needs is Slytherin to complete the set, unless you've already done that?"

Harry was too full of thoughts of werewolves and Horcruxes to bother lying. "It must be really cool when the giant squid swims by those windows."

"Indeed it is," agreed Dumbledore. "Which common room do you like the best?"

"Gryffindor," said Harry, and it was the absolute truth. He was glad that the Sorting Hat had decided as it had. "Going to bed in a dungeon at night would remind me too much of-" he started to say that it would remind him too much of the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys' house, but then decided that that was none of Dumbledore's business. "Anyway, I'd rather be in a tower," he completed.

They were in Dumbledore's office, now, and Harry ended the enchantment he'd used to hide his words from prying ears.

"That's a tricky little spell," said Dumbledore mildly. "Technically forbidden in school corridors, but I cannot object to your use of it under the circumstances. And while we are on the subject of your unusual acts of service toward the school and the wizarding world in general, I believe I have uncovered the hiding place of another Horcrux. Your assistance in retrieving it would be most welcome if you are still interested."

All thoughts of Luna's shoes and Ernie's prefect badge flew from his head. "Yes!" he said eagerly. "When can we leave?"

"I believe that we shall wait until the end of the term," said Dumbledore. "No one is likely to disturb the Horcrux before that time, and your presence and mine- not to mention Professor Snape's and Professor Lupin's- will be less needed here. Not that I entirely believe that you and I will have any need of the others, but I suppose we shall indulge their need to be trusted and invite them."

"Sirius too?" asked Harry.

"Yes, Sirius as well. We shall retrieve and destroy a Horcrux and then celebrate Christmas the next day. Are you amenable to that?"

"It sounds wonderful," said Harry, and it did.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: The description of the Hufflepuff common room relies on JKR's website and the Hogwarts Mystery game. The description of the Ravenclaw common room is ripped directly from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. A few lines of Luna's dialog borrowed from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.


	67. The Cave

The full moon fell on December 7. Once again, thanks to the combination of Severus' brilliance, Sirius' devotion, and his own grit, Remus managed to teach a full day of classes in the moon's aftermath.

As often as he reminded himself to be grateful- such a feat would have been unthinkable twenty years before- he couldn't ignore the exhausted ache deep in his bones as it led to bouts of dizziness and nausea. He would never have wanted a student to come to class in such a state, nor would he have expected his colleagues to teach in such a state.

But with more and more students whispering his secret in corridors and common rooms, he had no choice. He needed to stay at Hogwarts, with Harry, for every moment that he could. He needed to give all of the OWL and NEWT students their best chance at succeeding in the exams.

He needed to enjoy this job while he had it.

He was not pleased, then, when he was forced to give detention to two of his favorite second years when he caught them hurling Every Flavor Beans from the top of the main staircase at their classmates below. The problem was that Namrata and Margarita knew perfectly well how much he liked them. They'd stood there and winked at him, beaming, insisting that they hadn't done it _while the bag of Every Flavor Beans was still plainly visible in Margarita's hand_ .

He had to summon his last reserves of energy to point out that their activity of choice was mildly dangerous and horrifically disrespectful, and to suggest that perhaps he ought to tell Mr. Filch what he had seen and allow him to make them his apprentices as he cleaned the castle from top to bottom without magic.

At that point, Namrata had summoned the self-preservation to apologize sincerely and he had told the two of them that their detention would be served with him the next night. After all, he was too tired to clean the cages and tanks that housed the creatures his third years were studying, but Namrata and Margarita were perfectly capable of doing it under his supervision.

They chattered happily as they worked. Remus couldn't help but be delighted when they agreed that they were very much looking forward to their third year when they could study the grindylow in their class instead of in detention.

"And third year starts with boggart day!" exclaimed Margarita. "What d'you reckon yours will be?"

"A snake." Namrata shuddered. "A basilisk maybe."

"Dennis told me his brother saw a basilisk. Turned it right into a coil of ribbon."

"I could do that." Neither Namrata nor Margarita ever lacked for confidence.

Remus wished with all of his heart that there was even the slightest possibility that he would still be their teacher in their third year. He wanted to be there on their boggart day. He wanted them to _have_ a boggart day.

They worked well together. Brushes, food, water, and soap passed between them as if they were parts of one being. The pair of them reminded him of Sirius and James. They always had.

The pair of them also reminded him of their former classmate Simona MacAlastair, who had left Hogwarts almost exactly a year before. He wished that he could have found a way to make Hogwarts palatable to Simona. He would leave Hogwarts with regrets both that he hadn't done more in the past and that he wouldn't be permitted to do more in the future.

Remus had just returned the grindylow to his newly refurbished tank when Namrata and Margarita became suddenly, suspiciously quiet. He knew why when he heard Dumbledore's voice.

"Miss Vemulakonda. Miss Jewell. Serving a detention, I see?"

"Yes, Headmaster," they chorused. Margarita even went so far as to blush.

"I'm afraid that I must speak to Professor Lupin and that as a result your detention must be cut short. You are willing to make this sacrifice for my convenience, I trust?"

"Anything for Hogwarts and its headmaster," said Namrata with a cheeky smile.

"Excellent. Thank you. Mind that you walk straight back to Gryffindor Tower with no detours."

They chorused that they would. Remus put the odds of their honesty at roughly fifty percent and told them goodnight. They called their own goodnights over their shoulders as they scurried away, pleased with their luck.

* * *

"I hope I didn't undermine you, Remus," said Dumbledore when the door was closed and the girls were out of earshot. "But you and I are overdue for a conversation."

Remus nodded. It was true.

"I expect that you are aware that the Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act passed today."

"It was hardly a surprise."

"When it takes effect in January, you will risk Azkaban every day that you remain at the school as a professor. I expect that I know your answer, but I must ask you again now that your fate is all but certain: do you wish to wait until you are discovered, or do you wish to resign during the Christmas holiday?"

It was no choice at all. He had put Harry in the position of needing to defeat Voldemort once again. He could do nothing but stay at Hogwarts, with Harry, for as long as he could. "I am determined to stay, Headmaster."

"I thought you would say that, and I'm sure you know that I'm pleased. I know it will not be easy."

Privately, Remus thought that submitting to Azkaban would feel much more natural to him than many of the things he had done in the past few years: accepting Sirius' money, inserting himself into Harry's life, and offering himself to Dora.

"We also need to discuss a special project I have taken the liberty of scheduling for the early hours of Christmas Eve morning."

For an instant, Remus was surprised. The previous Christmas, most of the students had chosen to spend their holiday at the school because of the Triwizard Tournament and the Yule Ball. This year, from what Remus had heard, only three students would remain over the winter holiday.

Then he realized, belatedly, that the special project had nothing to do with the school. To the contrary, it had been scheduled for a time when no students would miss them. On Christmas Eve, almost everyone in Britain would be busy with his or her own plans. No one would notice them.

"Indeed?" asked Remus. "Do you believe you've found a Horcrux?"

"I believe I've found the Horcrux that Harry and I were seeking the night I died in your memories. Tell me, Remus, do you recall any indication that Harry and I had been near the sea on that night?"

Remus shook his head. "You've seen and heard everything that I saw and heard."

"But a memory in a Pensieve doesn't tell me whether you smelled sea air clinging to Harry the night he told you that Severus murdered me in front of him."

If he had, Remus hadn't noticed, his mind being otherwise engaged. He told Dumbledore as much.

"We shall soon know, then. I've already spoken to Harry and Severus, and sent an owl to Sirius, although of course I was quite vague in my letter as to precisely why I required his presence on Christmas Eve. I will tell you a bit more. Each of the Horcruxes we have found thus far have been hidden in a place that had meaning to Voldemort. The cup and the diary were left with his most trusted followers. The diadem he hid here, where he honed his powers. The ring was left at his family's ancestral home. I believe that he may have hidden a piece of his soul in the place where he first learned that he could control his magic well enough to cause permanent damage to those who would not do his bidding, a place he is arrogant enough to believe that no one could ever find."

"But you have found it?"

"I have." Dumbledore was serene in the way that only Dumbledore could be.

"I'm a bit surprised that you didn't simply fetch it yourself, as you did the when you determined that you knew where to find Helga Hufflepuff's cup."

"Ah, but there will be nothing simple about fetching it. I have invited each of you for reason. Alas, Remus, I believe that your most important task will be the most difficult."

Remus braced himself for the revelation. Did Dumbledore want him to hold off a hundred dementors indefinitely? Face a pack of werewolves? Distract Dolores Umbridge? "Yes, Headmaster?"

"I need you to keep Sirius and Severus from destroying each other and sabotaging the entire purpose of our expedition in the process."

"I will do my best." It sounded weak, even to his own ears. He had been failing at that very thing since childhood.

"You need to use any means necessary."

The thought turned his stomach. He wasn't certain that those means existed. Sirius and Severus were both more clever than he was and they could both out-duel him. That left appealing to their senses of superiority and duty, or just begging Sirius to behave out of affection for Remus… "Yes, Sir."

"We are very close, Remus. You and I have both speculated that Voldemort intended to create a sixth and final Horcrux when he murdered the Potters. If that is so, and I do not believe that we can know for certain until we find a way to ask Voldemort himself, the only step remaining once we have destroyed this Horcrux-almost certainly a locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin-"

"Is to resurrect Voldemort and ask Harry to submit to the killing curse."

"You have not yet told him that he is a Horcrux?"

"No. I don't fancy offering him that revelation as a Christmas present."

"Nor do I. But the time when none of us will have a choice is fast approaching."

* * *

Dumbledore's words rang in Remus' ears each time he saw Harry for the next week.

On the last day of classes, Harry sauntered into the fourth-year Ravenclaws' Defense lesson and dropped his arm around Luna Lovegood's shoulders. He looked insolently at Helen Bolton, who blushed and fluttered her eyelashes.

"I've heard that people have been taking my friend Luna's belongings without her permission. Is that something that happens a lot in your dormitory?"

Helen gaped and stammered that she didn't think it happened very much, no, and hopefully it had been a misunderstanding, and she would certainly look out for such problems in the future.

"Good," said Harry warmly. He squeezed Luna's shoulders, waved goodbye to Remus, and made an exit that Remus fancied was rather reminiscent of James. James had always known exactly how to make an entrance, or an exit, send the perfect message. (James' perfect message had admittedly often been along the lines of _I am powerful and brilliant_ , but he had delivered it with much style and good humor.)

* * *

Remus decided not to summon Harry to his office. Ron and Hermione would be going home for Christmas the next morning, and Remus didn't doubt that Harry wanted one last evening with them before they separated for several weeks. This would be their first Christmas spent entirely apart from one another since they'd begun school.

Nonetheless, Harry arrived at his office uninvited soon after the evening meal ended.

"I thought you might like to know why I was in your Ravenclaw fourth year class today."

"I assumed that you enjoyed last year's classes so much that you wished to relive them."

Harry smiled, but his eyes remained serious behind his round glasses. "Well, yes. But a few weeks ago Luna Lovegood couldn't go to class because someone took all of her shoes. She says it's something that happens all the time. People take her things and hide them because they think she's odd. And she is odd, but that's no reason to take her things!"

"Of course not."

"It took me a while to work out which of her roommates was doing it. I mean, I reckon they all know, and maybe Helen Bolton does it because one of the others says to. Sometimes all it takes to make something like that stop is knowing that someone is paying attention, so I told Helen I was paying attention."

"And she certainly heard you."

"I don't know anything about her. Is she usually horrid?"

Remus smiled. "I can't share my thoughts on one student with another, Harry. But I will take your concern about Luna seriously and I'll watch all of those students more carefully. Is it all right with you and Luna if I speak to Professor Flitwick as well?"

Harry shrugged. "Do you think that will do any good? The teachers don't usually care about things like that."

"That isn't true," said Remus, even though he knew perfectly well why Harry would think it was.

"Neville sees Snape in a _boggart_ . And in my second year- you weren't here yet- but everyone decided that I was the Heir of Slytherin who was setting the basilisk on Muggle-borns, and people would point at me in the corridors, and hiss at me, and Peeves had a song." Harry puffed out his chest in a fair imitation of Peeves' usual posture. _"Oh, Potter, you rotter, oh what have you done, you're killing off students, you think it's good fun!"_

"Professor Snape is an unusual case. I think you understand something of why."

Harry shrugged again.

Remus tried not to sigh. He knew where Harry was coming from. "I won't share the details with you, but Professor Flitwick came to me earlier this year regarding his discipline of a student for inappropriate behavior toward another student. He wanted to make certain that I enforced it in my class."

"Did the student stop doing whatever it was to the other student?"

"I don't know. I hope that it was an isolated incident. But nothing further has been reported, and neither Professor Flitwick nor I have seen anything."

"Then I suppose you can tell Professor Flitwick. Luna doesn't think there's any point, but she doesn't mind."

"Very well. Thank you, Harry. Though I must admit that as a practical matter you may have solved Luna's problem. Your good opinion is so very much in demand amongst your admiring public."

"Do they still think I'm looking for people to invite to another weird birthday party next summer?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps they just admire you. Quidditch star. Dueling champion. Boy Who Lived. Chosen One."

_"Chosen One?"_

Remus hadn't meant to share that with Harry, but he didn't think it would hurt. "That's what they called you when it became public knowledge that you were fated to defeat Lord Voldemort. The Chosen One."

"How did it become- how did people know?"

"They drew that conclusion after Voldemort's public return established that you had been telling the truth about Cedric's death. I don't think very many people actually knew. Technically, I didn't know for a fact. I certainly wasn't invited to come along on Horcrux hunts with you the first time around."

Harry's fingers brushed over the scar on his forehead. Remus nearly told him the entire truth right then. But it was true, what he'd said to Dumbledore- the truth would make for a terrible Christmas present. And Sirius would be infuriated if Remus told Harry without warning.

But, a voice in the back of Remus' mind pushed, _I was going to do better with Harry this time. I was going to offer him my time and my knowledge and let him tell me to bugger off if he didn't want it. I wasn't going to be the person who thought it was better if he didn't know that I knew James. The person who was afraid to touch him. I've as much right as Sirius to tell him._

In the end, he didn't tell him. Instead, he told Harry that he could have extra Defense lessons every morning for the next week in preparation for their journey.

"Can I learn the talking Patronus?" asked Harry eagerly.

"Yes, and we'd best practice your _Vermillious_ in case you get separated and need to signal us. And…" Dumbledore had said that they were going to the sea. "Your bubble-head charm and perhaps _Incendio_ ."

"That's a first year spell."

"Then I hope you're more than proficient with it."

(They practiced every morning for a week. Harry was, indeed, more than proficient with it. Each afternoon when Harry went to visit Sirius, Sirius sent Remus a rather profane owl suggesting that he ought to find more interesting spells for Harry to practice.)

* * *

Happily, December 23 was the new moon and Remus felt his strongest and most human when they traveled to the place Dumbledore believed housed Voldemort's Horcrux.

Dumbledore looked as serious and determined as Remus has ever seen him. Gone was the friendly twinkle in his eye, the generous willingness to poke fun at himself that came with being the most powerful man in the world.

Beside Dumbledore, Severus' face was set in a tight-lipped sneer. He looked as if he might murder Sirius the moment Dumbledore's back was turned.

Sirius, for his part, was doing everything in his power to make Harry laugh. Currently that included singing a modified Christmas song.

_I don't want a lot for Christmas_

_There is just one thing I need_

_I don't care about the presents_

_Underneath the Christmas tree_

_I just want his soul to drown_

_In a ring or in a crown_

_Searching them out sucks_

_All I want is one more Horcrux_

_Voldemort has gone and hid_

_His soul shards everywhere_

_In the school and in the bank_

_Without a care_

_And everyone is seeking_

_And those Malfoys are sneaking_

_Santa won't you bring me_

_The one thing I need_

_Won't you please bring a Horcrux to me_

_I don't want a lot for Christmas_

_This is all I'm asking for_

_I just want to see Tom's Riddle_

_Smashed to pieces with the sword-_

"A little more subtlety, please, Sirius," said Dumbledore, and Sirius fell silent. "Though you have always had a very fine singing voice."

It was true. When they'd been younger, Sirius had often been accused of having perfect pitch (he'd once drunkenly explained that in truth he only had relative pitch, which he believed anyone could learn if cared to). He had, of course, refused to cultivate his musical talent for the usual reason: his parents would have approved.

"I liked it," said Harry loyally. He was bouncing on his toes with eagerness, clearly in no need of a distraction.

Soon, they could spare no energy for singing or bouncing. Following Dumbledore's lead, they arrived at a high outcrop of dark rock. Water foamed and churned below them; a towering cliff stood behind them. They made a treacherous descent to the slippery rocks, against which lapped the cold, unforgiving water.

"From here," said Dumbledore, "we must swim."

And they swam through the frigid water to a dark slit in the rock face. The fissure became a tunnel, which became a passageway, which became steps leading to a cave.

Dumbledore caressed the wall of the cave while the others drew their wands and dried their sodden robes.

"Bet you aren't still sulking about those swimming lessons I made you take last summer," Sirius murmured to Harry.

"I didn't sulk," said Harry, but his attention was on Dumbledore. "Sir? Why do you have a knife?"

Dumbledore beamed, as if Harry had asked a clever question. "I find it most crude, almost unbelievably so, but the door requires payment in blood. I would have thought Voldemort-"

"Then you would have thought wrongly," injected Snape. "He would not miss an opportunity to cause even the slightest pain to his enemies, and I highly doubt that he cares whether you find his methodology crude."

"I disagree with you, Severus," said Dumbledore, but he let Snape take the knife from his hand.

Snape wound the knife around his fingers; Remus could see, now, that it was the kind of blade ordinarily used to prepare potions ingredients. "You can't spill your blood, Headmaster. You're much too valuable. And I imagine that you won't stand for us spilling the blood of the famous Mr. Potter, as much as you might wish to force the Dark Lord to appreciate the symbolism." He extended the knife to Sirius. "Perhaps you would like to make yourself useful, for once?"

Remus attempted to step between them- Dumbledore hadn't been wrong to suggest that Sirius and Severus needed constant supervision when they attempted to work toward a common goal- but Snape avoided him neatly.

"No werewolves need apply," said Snape witheringly, and Remus knew that the turn of phrase was not a coincidence. "Who knows how the curse in your blood might affect the door?"

"I'll do it," snapped Sirius. He wrenched the knife from Snape's hand and slashed the blade against his own arm, leaving a longer and deeper gash than Remus would have preferred, for all that he knew it could be sealed in the blink of an eye.

Beside them, Harry tensed, and that seemed to snap Sirius out of his desire to demonstrate his ability to bleed.

"Here?" Sirius asked Dumbledore politely, and when Dumbledore agreed, he smeared his blood against the rock wall.

The blazing silver outline of an arch appeared and the blood-spattered rock within it vanished to reveal a great black lake. They stepped through the archway onto a narrow rock ledge.

The darkness was oppressive; they lit their wands, but it did little good. "First of all, do not touch the water," Dumbledore ordered. "Sirius, stay close to the gateway, if you please. Severus, Remus, and Harry: I believe we are looking for- ah, yes." A tiny boat appeared from nowhere. It was clearly meant to hold no more than one. "I believe that it will allow Harry to come with me, as he is underaged and unqualified, and his magic will not register compared to mine."

"No," said Sirius. "Absolutely not. No one who is, as you say, underaged and unqualified-"

"You promised me last Christmas," Harry interrupted, hard and determined. "At the playground at St. Grogory's. You said that as soon as there was something I could do to help, you would tell me."

"That was before I knew a Horcrux was being used to-"

Harry stepped into the boat.

"Fine," said Sirius. "But do exactly what Dumbledore says and send up red sparks if anything unexpected happens."

"See you in a minute," said Harry, and he and Dumbledore and the boat were gone.

Sirius and Severus followed the boat with their eyes as best as they could, but Remus stared into the churning water. The longer he looked, the more convinced he became that there was very little water at all in the great black lake.

There were hands, there were feet, there were blank faces.

It was a massive, magical graveyard.

 _Do not touch the water,_ Dumbledore had said, leaving unspoken the words _lest you wake an entire army of inferi._

"Thinking of bringing one back for your third years to observe?" Severus asked, suddenly looming beside Remus.

"What are they? Some sort of water demons?" Sirius, too, stepped closer to Remus and drew in his breath as he realized what he was seeing. "No wonder you had Harry practicing fire spells. You might have warned me, though."

"I didn't know," said Remus. "How many do you think there are?"

"Too many for us to take them all out quickly enough if something rouses them."

Remus had come to the same grim conclusion.

Severus' voice was low and sneering. "As long as that boy keeps his hands inside the boat, it shouldn't matter."

Sirius' head shot up, sensitive to any insult to Harry. "If he touches the water, he'll have a reason. It's likely set up so that there's something he has to do when he gets closer. Something that _requires_ water."

"No need to make excuses for your godson's thickness before he's even-"

"Silence!" Remus snapped, glad that it was dark enough that neither Sirius nor Severus could see his face. Nor did he need to see Severus' disdain or Sirius' unflattering astonishment. "Let us assume that Harry or Dumbledore will rouse the inferi, out of necessity or otherwise. What is our course of action should that happen?"

"We need to create a passageway of fire for the boat to pass through," said Severus.

"We seal off the far sides and only worry about the inferi in our direct path," Sirius said almost simultaneously.

In the dark night of the new moon in the shadow of a cave in winter, they couldn't properly glare at one another for daring to agree.

* * *

They saw Harry's red sparks from the center of the lake before they saw the inferi stir.

"We know where they are. There's no danger of a miscast spell." Remus wasn't certain which of them had spoken aloud. They all knew that it was time to take action, before the inferi had a chance to attack.

The roar of fire warmed and enveloped them. The flames shooting from their wands looked out of place in the hidden lake where nothing had been bright or warm for many years.

Sirius cast to the left of Harry's beacon and Severus cast to the right. Remus busied himself with eliminating the few inferi who were safe between the walls of fire and were heading resolutely toward the trio of the ledge.

 _Incendio_ . An emaciated, bearded man.

 _Incendio_ . An elderly woman, her waterlogged rags not covering her misshapen breasts.

 _Incendio_ . A child, not more than five years old, his sunken face somehow yearning as it pulled away from his blank eyes.

 _Incedio_ . Hollow cheeks. Narrow waists.

 _Incendio_ . Half a dozen in a tangle of skeletal arms and legs.

 _Incendio_ . A man who would have been uncommonly broad-shouldered. He had worn his hair in dreadlocks, and decades in the water hadn't stripped them from his head. Before he knew why he was looking, Remus eyed the shape of his face closely, and that confirmed the story the dreadlocks had told. This was what remained of Caradoc Dearborn, who had been a member of the Order of the Phoenix. He had vanished in 1980; they'd never found his body.

Remus wanted to summon the abused corpse, to find a way to take it home and bury it properly, but the flames were already engulfing Caradoc's body and more inferi were coming.

"All right, Remus?" He glanced at Sirius. Sirius hadn't removed his gaze from the spell he was casting- powerful and protective- but he had sensed that Remus had stopped where stopping wasn't prudent.

"All right," Remus returned, and he thought it best if they all blamed the extra rasp in his voice on the smoke.

"The boat's coming. Dumbledore doesn't look right. Careful, Lupin!" That was Snape, just as adept at his craft as Sirius. Remus scalded the last few inferi as Harry stood up in the boat, pulling Dumbledore to his feet as he did.

Snape dragged Dumbledore onto the ledge; Sirius reopened the archway, which had long since sealed behind them. Remus grabbed Harry by his arm. "What happened to Dumbledore, Harry?"

"There was a potion. He had to drink it. He wouldn't let me do it. He-"

"Never mind why. Tell us about the potion!" Snape demanded as they staggered through the archway.

"It was-"

"What color?" asked Severus.

"Bright green. When he drank it he said he wanted to die, and then it made him thirsty-"

"That won't be what kills him." Severus hands flew over Dumbledore's prone form. There were burns where the flames had lapped at him and gashes where the inferi had reached him. "Lupin, help me."

"Sirius is the Healer," said Remus. And he put one hand between Sirius' shoulder blades to direct him toward his patient.

Sirius fell to the task. Wounds inflicted by inferi were nothing to a man who had been ministering to wounds inflicted by a werewolf for most of his life.

In the dim light of his wand, Remus fancied that he could see the slightest hint of respect on Severus' face.

"Did you get what we came for?" Remus asked Harry, when they could do nothing but hold their wands aloft to give Sirius and Severus light to work by.

"Yes. I had to let go of Dumbledore to take it out of the bottom of the basin after he drank the potion, and that's when he touched the water and those… things… woke up. They're called inferi?"

"He'll do well on his Defense OWL, Lupin. You must be so proud," drawled Severus from his place on the ground. Severus ignored whatever Sirius spat in return in favor of conjuring a goblet and splashing water on Dumbledore's face. Dumbledore, to Remus' immense relief, sat up and drank greedily.

"I'm all right Severus, I'm all right," were Dumbledore's first words. "Harry? You have it?"

Harry fell to his knees on the hard rock floor and drew a glittering locket from his pocket. "Yes, Sir."

"Hold onto it. Perhaps tomorrow…"

"Perhaps tomorrow Madam Pomfrey will free you from her Hospital Wing, but I have my doubts," said Severus. "Let's get back to the cliff so we can Apparate."

* * *

It was with little difficulty that they maneuvered Dumbledore back to the mostly-empty castle. For a while, Sirius and Remus and Harry stood at the edge of the Hospital Wing while Madam Pomfrey and Severus debated the best course of action and Dumbledore occasionally made an amused suggestion.

When it was quite clear that Dumbledore was well recovered and merely humoring his concerned staff, Harry turned to Sirius. "Were you really a Healer?"

"Why would you ask that?"

"That's what Remus said when Snape told him to help Dumbledore. He said you were the Healer. I know he always says you're good at everything, but it sounded different. So I wondered if that was what you studied."

"No," said Sirius. "I didn't study anything. I didn't have to. There was a war to fight and I planned to fight it. It wasn't as if I needed money to support myself."

"But wasn't there anything you wanted to do?"

"I wanted to fight Voldemort."

"He is unusually good at healing magic," said Remus. "He had ample opportunities to practice on me even before the war heated up."

"I'm good at healing you because you're you." Sirius' voice was gruff. "I'd be an awful Healer if I was meant to be kind to everyone."

"I assure you that most Healers aren't kind to everyone." Remus knew that very well. In his youth, several Healers had flatly refused to help him, even to touch him, once they'd realized what he was.

"Nonetheless, I never considered training as a Healer- or anything else- then and I wouldn't consider it now. I don't need the money and I don't want any responsibilities that could get in the way of protecting Harry and winning this war." Sirius' tone made it clear that he considered the matter to be closed. "Give me the locket, Harry. It needs destroying and there's no reason to wait for Dumbledore."

Harry obediently withdrew the locket and passed it to Sirius. Sirius weighed it in his hand. "It's not right," he said quietly.

"What do you mean it's not right? I haven't let go of it since I took it out of the basin."

"This locket didn't belong to Salazar Slytherin. He branded everything he touched, like the pureblood families still do today. It's much too plain. It's too light to be real goblin silver. It's not not entirely poor quality, but it's nothing Voldemort would put his soul into. Hold out your hand, Moony."

Remus did, and Sirius dropped the locket into his waiting palm. "Feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"Exactly. The diadem had almost a heartbeat. So did the ring. There's no dark magic in this. It's not magical at all as far as I can tell."

Remus had a sinking feeling that Sirius was right. "Let's take it up to the Headmaster's office and use the Sword of Gryffindor on it just in case."

Sirius turned on his heel and led the way.

When they reached Dumbledore's office, Harry guessed the password on his third try ("acid pop"). Remus dropped the locket onto the table and Sirius removed the sword from the wall.

"Take a whack at it, Harry," said Sirius. "You're the one who brought it back."

Harry took the sword with thoughtful deliberation before bringing it down on the locket with a resounding _crack_ .

There was no wave of green smoke and no rancid smell, although the locket shattered into pieces. A fragment of parchment that had apparently been tucked inside the locket fluttered to the floor.

Remus picked it up and unfolded it. Harry and Sirius leaned over his shoulders to read.

_To the Dark Lord_

_I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more._

_R. A. B._

Remus didn't have time to digest the words before Sirius snatched the note from him and crumbled it in his fist.

"Son of a bitch. Regulus."

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: Still don't own All I Want for Christmas is You. Borrowed a few lines from Half-Blood Prince when describing the cave. And obviously I did not write Regulus' note.


	68. Sirius, Brother

Sirius rolled his eyes skyward, reviling at the tug of magic before he even uttered the command. "Kreacher!"

Kreacher appeared at his feet with a pop, clad in a neat tea towel rather than his preferred filthy loincloth. His sneer of disgust was all too familiar, however. "Kreacher is here because Master called, little though Kreacher likes it, how Kreacher's Mistress would cry if she knew-"

"Yes, Kreacher, I don't like it any better than you do!" Sirius snapped. His mother had been perfectly capable of telling him what a great disappointment he had been without Kreacher's help, but Kreacher had always been more than willing to reinforce the family narrative. Kreacher had worshipped Walburga and Orion and Regulus…

Regulus.

Best to get to the point and end this little family reunion as soon as possible.

"Kreacher, did my brother Regulus ever ask you to help him destroy a locket?"

Kreacher flung himself to the ground and pounded his head against the hard stone corner of Dumbledore's hearth.

"KREACHER, I ORDER YOU TO STOP BEING MELODRAMATIC AND ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Sirius shouted. He un-crumpled the note he still clenched in his fist and fell to his knees beside the elf. Kreacher hadn't stopped pounding his head against the hearth; apparently Kreacher and Sirius had different definitions of _melodramatic_ . "Look at this!" Sirius grabbed Kreacher by his neck and shoved the scrap of parchment in front of his streaming eyes. "This is Regulus' handwriting. These are his initials. It was written around the time he died. It says he stole a locket knowing that he would die and that he was hoping to destroy it first. What do you know about that?"

"KREACHER WON'T!" It was the closest thing to a roar Sirius had ever heard from a house-elf. It also should have been magically impossible. Sirius had asked a direct question and it was clear to Sirius, even though his enraged haze, that Kreacher knew the answer. Kreacher shouldn't have had a choice about answering.

 _"I am your master and I gave you an order!"_ Sirius shouted back. His voice shook and he fought the urge to take his hand off of Kreacher's neck and use it to strangle the elf instead. But that was what Kreacher wanted. If Sirius let go of Kreacher, he would smash his brains out on the hearth. Kreacher would rather die than tell Sirius how to defeat Voldemort.

They were so close. They were so close to finding another Horcrux, so close to giving Harry and his friends a safer world, and they weren't going to manage it because Sirius' parents' house-elf hated Sirius as much as Sirius' parents always had.

" _Sirius_ !" Harry appeared at Sirius' shoulder, looking anxious and worried and even a little bit frightened. "Sirius, let go of him."

"If I do, he'll do himself in," said Sirius, wondering when his godson had gotten to be so thick. "Then we'll never find out what he knows."

"Order him not to hurt himself," Remus called from the middle of the room.

"He's not listening to my orders," Sirius pointed out, lamenting that Professor Moony had also suddenly become an idiot. "If he was, he would have answered already."

"He may have found some sort of loophole in that question," Remus said, gently and detachedly as if he were teaching a class of high-strung twelve-year-olds. "Let's see whether he's still bound to obey you. Order him to be still and not hurt himself."

Sirius would have liked to have punched Remus in his condescending, holier-than-thou face, but that would have meant letting go of the elf. "Kreacher, as your master, Sirius Black, the last of the Blacks, I order you to sit still and not hurt yourself."

Kreacher froze beneath his hands.

"Maybe we could try to ask nicely?" Harry asked, inches away from Sirius and Kreacher. Something in Harry's tone told Sirius that Harry, just like Remus and Kreacher and Walburga and Orion and Regulus, thought Sirius was a useless idiot that no one could ever like.

"Fine." Sirius let go of Kreacher and stood, turing to stare at Dumbledore's bookcase so that he wouldn't have to look at Harry or Remus or any of it. "Fucking ask nicely if you must. Kreacher, I order you to answer honestly if you know the answers to Harry's questions."

"Half-blood," Kreacher croaked, and Sirius knew that tears were still streaming from the elf's overlarge eyes and dripping from his bulbous nose. "Kreacher should not have to answer questions from a half-blood."

"Kreacher will answer Harry's questions because I order him to do it!" Sirius bellowed, and the insolent silence that followed told him that the order had taken.

"Kreacher," asked Harry quietly, "Do you want a drink or something to dry your eyes?"

Sirius ground his teeth and stared at the books on the shelf in front of him. _The Pocket Book of Transfiguration. The Transfiguration Anthology. The Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace. Great Minds of Transfiguration._

"Kreacher wants nothing from the boy whose mother was Mudblood filth."

Sirius read more titles. _The Transfiguration Dictionary. 1000 Transfigurations to Try Before You Die. Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration. Transformation Through the Ages._

"Kreacher," said Harry, as if the elf hadn't just called Lily by one of the ugliest words in the English language, "when was the last time you saw Regulus Black before he disappeared?"

"Kreacher saw Master Regulus disappear."

Kreacher was sobbing openly again, shaking and gasping and choking.

Sirius clenched his jaw and stared harder at the bookcase. _The Best of Transfiguration Today, 1980-1989. Switching Spells on the Grandest Scale. The Secret Life of Transfigured Birds._

"Did you see Master Regulus disappear under the water beside an island after drinking a basin of green potion?"

"Yes!"

The titles blurred and ran together as Sirius stared. _Beyond NEWTS: Advanced Transfiguration. The Best of Transfiguration Today, 1970-1979. Automobiles and Airplanes: Transfiguration of Muggle Artifacts._

"Did Master Regulus order you not to tell anyone what he had done?"

"Yes."

"Was that why you couldn't answer Sirius' question? Because Master Regulus had already given you an order and you couldn't break your word to him?"

"Yes."

"Did Master Regulus order you to destroy the locket he stole?"

"Nothing Kreacher did made any mark upon it," moaned the elf. "Kreacher tried everything, everything he knew, but nothing, nothing would work… So many powerful spells upon the casing, Kreacher was sure the way to destroy it was to get inside it, but it would not open… Kreacher punished himself, he tried again, he punished himself, he tried again. Kreacher failed to obey orders, Kreacher could not destroy the locket! And his Mistress was mad with grief, because Master Regulus had disappeared, and Kreacher could not tell her what had happened, no, because Master Regulus had forbidden him to tell any of the family what happened in the cave…."

Kreacher began to sob so hard there were no more coherent words.

Harry paused to let Kreacher regain a modicum of control, this time wisely not offering any sort of comfort. Sirius risked moving a step to his left so he could stare at a different bookcase. Next to Dumbledore's Transfiguration section, it seemed, was his knitting section.

_Cast On, Bind Off. Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book. Milarrochy Heids. Knitwear Design Workshop. Mastering Color Knitting: Simple Instructions for Stranded, Intarsia, and Double Knitting. Custom Socks: Knit to Fit Your Feet._

"Kreacher," asked Harry. "Do you know where the locket is now?"

"Kreacher knows."

"Would you let me help you destroy it so that you can obey Master Regulus' orders? Now that we've found out what happened without you ever breaking your word to Regulus about telling us? That sword over there, I think that will break the locket."

"Kreacher hit the locket with goblin-made silver already. Kreacher tried. The sword cannot open the locket."

"Bring me the locket. Let me see if I can open it for Regulus."

There was a pop of Apparition, and Sirius had barely turned around to face the room before Kreacher was back with a locket dangling from one hand.

Sirius could see at a glance that this was the genuine article. It was as large as a chicken's egg. An ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green stones, sparkled brightly in the morning sunshine.

Harry laid the locket on the table and took the Sword of Gryffindor in his hand. He brought the sword down on the locket, or rather, he tried to- but the locket seemed to repel the sword. "You're right, Kreacher," said Harry. "I suppose we'll have to open it."

"It doesn't open," said Kreacher. "Kreacher told you-"

Harry casually handed to sword to Sirius. "Be ready to kill it if it does something odd when I open it, will you?" he asked.

"Just how are you going to open it?" asked Sirius as he gripped the hilt of the sword.

"I opened Slytherin's secret chamber. I can open Slytherin's locket as well. You see how the S looks like a snake?"

"Harry…" began Sirius, but he had nothing more to say. He was almost certain that Harry was correct: only Parselmouth could open the locket. He nodded that he was as ready as he would ever be.

On the table, the locket rattled of its own volition. It, too, was anticipating a fight.

The word escaped Harry's lips like a hiss and a snarl. The golden doors of the locket swung wide with a little click.

Sirius leaned over the table for a closer look. Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome.

"Stab it!" urged Harry and Remus in unison.

Sirius raised the sword. Dumbledore had done this, and Harry, and Remus, and Severus Fucking Snape. Sirius could certainly do it.

Then a voice hissed from out of the locket.

_"I have seen your heart, and it is mine."_

"Stab it!" Harry and Remus urged once more. But Sirius was mesmerized by the hissing voice. It was promising him something. It knew something. He had to know what it knew.

_"I have seen your dreams, Sirius Orion Black, and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible…"_

If Harry and Remus were still calling for him, Sirius didn't hear it. He gazed down into the dark eyes. The eyes lightened and became the particular shade of gray associated with English purebloods.

No, the particular shade of gray associated with the House of Black.

Then, out of the windows blossomed the shade of a teenage boy. He looked like Sirius, but slighter and shorter with coarser features that didn't offset the natural haughtiness of his expression.

It was Regulus.

 _"It's no wonder that our parents loved me and not you,"_ said the locket-Regulus. Sirius hadn't heard Regulus' voice in seventeen years. The sound of it turned his stomach and left him breathing in air that felt like Grimmauld Place. The sound of it also caused something in his shoulders to slacken with relief. " _I was better than you, after all. While you were flying about on your motorcycle, laughing with James, pretending that you were so very superior, I was dying to save the world from the Dark Lord."_

It was true.

_"Your plans led to James and Lily's deaths. I suppose I should be grateful that you wanted him for a brother and not me, or you might have gotten me killed before I was able to capture the locket."_

It was true.

_"Our parents were right when they said that I was the smart one, the worthy one, the better one, weren't they? You couldn't see. You were the only one who couldn't see me, weren't you? Last year, old Sluggy told you about me. Anna's little daughter told you about me. Even Aberforth Dumbledore told you about me. They all told you that you misjudged me, but you didn't care because you only hear exactly what you want to hear."_

It was true.

_"Your rashness killed Lily and James. Your rashness endangered Harry. Your rashness is the only reason Harry didn't have a proper childhood, and you ought to know that at some level he despises you for it. We all despised you: Mother and Father and me, even Kreacher. Everyone hated you. That's why no one cared when you went to Azkaban. When your own family finds you revolting, what hope is there for you in the rest of the world?"_

It was true.

_"You were never as clever as you thought you were. You will never be of any use to anyone. Remus pities you, perhaps, but he thinks little of the man who thought it funny to cause him to bite a classmate. Harry clings to you, perhaps, because thanks to you he has no one else. Little Nymphadora looks at you with curiosity, and Andromeda with nostalgia, but they lived the best years of their lives without you."_

It was true.

_"You are nothing, nothing, nothing to any of them. Nothing to Tonks or to Anna. Nothing to Remus. Nothing to Harry, you can do nothing for him, he is better off without you, he wouldn't miss you if you were gone, he didn't miss you when you were gone, he won't miss you when you come with me…"_

And Regulus reached out his hand.

Sirius was on the floor of his bedroom in Grimmauld Place. He wasn't more than nine years old. He'd stolen a wand- though saying he'd stolen it was an overstatement, as everyone in the family turned their backs to underage magic with a wink and a shit-eating grin- and he'd tried to cast a spell to turn the whole of his wall into a window so he could better see the city below. The whole house had shaken, at first as if to obey him, then as if to reprimand him.

A shock of pain sent him to the floor and he lay there, unable to move, but able to scream.

His throat hurt with screaming.

It was Bella who reached him first. She'd been dressing for dinner, and she hadn't finished yet; she wore only black underthings Sirius couldn't quite name. She hadn't bothered to pull on her robes when she'd run to him.

Her arms were bare when she gathered him against her chest (budding breasts barely covered by her thin black camisole). She told him that everything would be all right, that they could fix anything, that whatever he had done to make the house shudder, she was more than impressed.

Her hair, long and loose, fell around them both.

Sirius was only nine, and Bella was his cousin besides, but he knew that she was beautiful.

Regulus, whose room was just across the hall, came next, dragging their mother along with him.

There was scolding, and there was _finite incantantem_ , and Regulus held his hand while their mother cast something-or-other on Sirius that made his limbs want to work again.

The first thing he did was wrench his hand out of Regulus' and twist free of Bella's embrace.

Then he brought the sword down on top of Regulus and there was a long scream.

Sirius didn't know whether he was screaming in the past or whether he was screaming in the present or whether the locket was screaming.

When he looked properly at the locket, it was in pieces and the stained silk lining was smoking slightly.

Sirius felt his knees go weak and he stumbled before he let himself sit on the floor and bury his face in his knees.

"Well done, Sirius," said Remus in his ear. He could feel that Remus had sunk to the floor beside him, but he wasn't going to look up. He was going to make a mental list of the books he wanted to borrow from Dumbledore. He didn't care about any of the knitting books, but he thought he would like to read _The Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace_ and maybe skim the _Transfiguration Today_ anthologies.

Harry was talking, and he sounded very far away. "Thank you for helping us, Kreacher. This locket- it was the one Regulus used as a fake that night. Would you like to have it?"

The elf let out a howl. Maybe Kreacher had been the one screaming all along, not Sirius and not the locket. Maybe it was Bellatrix who had her arm around Sirius' shoulders and not Remus.

No.

For twelve long years, the dementors of Azkaban had told Sirius where he was and where he wasn't. The dementors of Azkaban were gone.

Sirius straightened his back and used his wand to conjure a handkerchief to dry his eyes.

"Is it dead?" he asked Remus.

"I'm positive. Yes," Remus confirmed.

It was quiet again. Harry had repaired Regulus' false locket and strung it around Kreacher's neck. The house-elf looked mollified, if a bit waterlogged.

"Kreacher," said Sirius roughly. "Now that you have destroyed the locket as Regulus asked, can you tell us how Regulus came to have it in the first place? We want the same thing Regulus wanted, you see, and knowing more about what he did might help us."

Kreacher looked at Sirius in a way that was entirely new to Sirius. The loathing, while present, was no longer absolute.

"Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. He said that the Dark Lord required an elf. He said it was an honor for him and for Kreacher, who must be sure to do whatever the Dark Lord ordered him to do, and then to come home.

"So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord did not tell Kreacher what they were to do, but took Kreacher with him to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake… there was a boat… there was a basin full of potion on the island. The Dark Lord made Kreacher drink it… And the Dark Lord sailed away, leaving Kreacher on the island.

"But Master Regulus had told Kreacher to come back, and Kreacher obeyed. But when Kreacher told Master Regulus what had happened, he was worried, very worried. Master Regulus told Kreacher to stay hidden and not to leave the house.

"Then Master Regulus came to find Kreacher in his cupboard one night. Master Regulus was strange, not as he usually was, disturbed in his mind, Kreacher could tell… and he asked Kreacher to take him to the cave where Kreacher had gone with the Dark Lord…

"Master Regulus took this locket from his pocket." Kreacher gestured to the locket Harry had hung around his neck moments before. "And he told Kreacher to take it, and when the basin was empty, to switch the lockets…

"And he ordered Kreacher to leave without him. He told Kreacher to go home- and never tell my mistress what he had done-but to destroy- the first locket." Kreacher pointed at the remains of the Horcrux. "And Master Regulus drank all the potion- and Kreacher swapped the lockets- and watched… as Master Regulus… was dragged beneath the water… and…"

"All right, Kreacher," said Sirius. He didn't need Kreacher to complete the mental image for him. "Thank you."

Kreacher stared at him, ugly mouth agape. "Master has never thanked Kreacher for anything before."

Sirius, still drained and weak-kneed, bit his tongue hard to stop himself telling Kreacher that this was the first time he had ever been useful, and of course Sirius hadn't thanked him for being a spying, foul-mouthed little shit.

"Master Regulus used to thank Kreacher," the elf continued. "Before the hands dragged Master Regulus beneath the water…"

"I'll get Regulus out of there," Sirius promised before he knew what he was saying. "His body. I'll bring it home and bury it properly beside our parents."

And Kreacher burst into fresh sobs and bowed low before Sirius.

It was the first non-facetious bow Sirius ever remembered receiving from Kreacher.

He forced himself to his feet. "Tell Dumbledore what happened with the locket, will you?" he asked Harry and Remus. Without waiting for an answer, he transformed into a dog and bounded from the room, the castle, the school grounds.

* * *

It felt good to run, and he hated to transform back into a man to Apparate to the sea. Once there, though, he could become a dog to swim the short way to the tunnel that led to the cave and the cavern.

He wasn't really surprised when Remus caught up to him as he stood on the edge of the lake, staring at the throngs of inferi.

"I left Harry to speak to Dumbledore," said Remus quietly.

"Good," said Sirius. "You can help me burn the inferi while I summon my brother's skeleton. Or do you suppose he hasn't decomposed properly because of all the magic in the water? Or did the inferi rip him into pieces, first, before he even had a chance to drown? He wouldn't become an inferius himself, would he? Voldemort didn't know what he'd done, so he couldn't have performed the spell. I rather think Voldemort just murdered Muggle tramps and turned them into inferi before he left them here. And perhaps the occasional lucky Order member."

"I'm certain you're correct about that."

And Sirius remembered with a start the way Remus had stopped casting when he shouldn't have stopped casting as they drew the boat carrying Harry back from the center of the lake. "Who did you see?"

"Caradoc Dearborn. You know we never found his body. But- you remember his dreadlocks? Once I saw them, I knew it was him, and I studied his face and wanted to bring him with us to be buried, but-"

"But we were too busy keeping ourselves alive at the time," Sirius completed.

"If anything remains of Regulus, you can retrieve it. I will help you. But I don't think today is the day."

Regulus' voice, twisted by the locket, returned to him:

_"Your rashness killed Lily and James. Your rashness endangered Harry. Your rashness is the only reason Harry didn't have a proper childhood, and you ought to know that at some level he despises you for it. You were never as clever as you thought you were."_

"If I try one summoning charm, can you protect us if it doesn't work?"

"Yes," said Remus. "But one try, Sirius. After that, we think about how to do it properly. Regulus can wait a bit longer. It won't make a difference to him. But it will make a difference to Harry if you aren't home for Christmas Eve tonight and Christmas at Andromeda's tomorrow."

It was a reasonable bargain and Sirius knew it. "Are you ready?"

Remus raised his wand in response.

" _Accio_ , Regulus!"

Sirius braced for the sensation of his brother's cold, wet corpse flying into his arms.

All that happened, though, was a stirring of inferi. Arms and legs and heads began to move, to rise, and Remus sent up a wall of flame. The wall of flame held the inferi back until Sirius and Remus were safely inside the cave.

"One try." Sirius echoed Remus' words. "Not too terribly rash."

"No," agreed Remus. "You've been quite clever and quite useful today. And you'd be very much missed if you weren't with your family tonight and tomorrow."

"You'll join us at Anna's tomorrow?" Sirius asked roughly. "You spent last Christmas at the school, and there are hardly any students staying this time around. You can get away for a few hours. This- if this was the last Horcrux, we know what comes next and this could be my last chance to have everyone I love together."

He felt ridiculous once the words had left his mouth. He didn't want to go to Christmas dinner. He wanted to sleep for a month until the Horcrux was no longer screaming at him with Regulus' voice and making him say things aloud that usually stayed in his head where they belonged.

But Remus pulled him into an embrace. "I love you, too, and I'll be there tomorrow."

It was something to hold on to, ten feet from the lake where Regulus had drowned.

**_To be continued._ **


	69. Sirius, Cousin

When Sirius and Remus reached the edge of Hogwarts grounds, they found Harry awaiting them. Harry was making good use of the various burning spells Remus had had him practicing all week to sculpt a giant golden snitch out of a great mound of snow. When he noticed that Sirius and Remus had arrived, Harry finished off his impromptu art project by charming it to sparkle with gold.

"Your charmwork is excellent, Harry," said Remus. "That's at least two OWLs you needn't worry about too much."

"Tell it to Hermione," said Harry. "I'm pretty sure she got Ron and me homework planners for Christmas."

At any other time, Sirius would have laughed, but Harry's casual commentary on his marks and his friends seemed very far away.

"Did you speak to Dumbledore?" Remus was asking.

"Yes. I told him everything. Well- almost." Harry glanced apologetically at Sirius. "I tried to leave out the stuff the locket said to you, but the portrait of Phineas Nigellus-"

Sirius swore in a way he hadn't since his first months away from Azkaban. "I forgot he was there. This was the one time he didn't try to call everyone's attention to himself."

"He said that the real Regulus wouldn't have spoken to you that way."

Sirius closed his eyes for an instant in the hope that that would make everything- Harry and Remus and the castle and the snow snitch- disappear. It didn't work. When he opened his eyes, the light bouncing off the snow was still blinding and Harry and Remus were still watching him carefully.

"Regulus spoke to me that way many times. It's how Kreacher still speaks to me. It's how my mother's portrait at Grimmauld Place speaks to me. It's how Phineas Nigellus speaks to me, come to that. I'm sure he had quite a laugh telling Dumbledore what happened."

"I don't think he did," said Harry, and Sirius didn't bother arguing because he hated arguing with Harry. "Dumbledore offered Kreacher the holiday off, but Kreacher got kind of offended and said he wanted to cook the feast tomorrow. Oh, and he brought me a treacle tart. I knew you'd tell me not to eat it in case he poisoned it, but Dobby came along with him so I thought it would be all right and it was." Harry casually summoned a bag that had been lying on the far side of his snow snitch. "Are you ready to go back to Hogsmeade?"

Sirius wasn't ready to do anything other than turn back into a dog and swim across the frozen lake until he couldn't feel anything. With an unconscious snort, he realized that if he did, he would drown as Regulus had drowned.

"Yes," he told Harry. "I'm ready to go." He glanced at Remus. "Remember that you promised to come round Andromeda's tomorrow."

"So I did," said Remus. "I'll see you then."

It was a perfectly normal sort of goodbye, but it left Sirius biting down a wave of anger as he considered how likely it was that Remus was going to go straight to Dumbledore- or worse, to Snape- to discuss Sirius and Sirius' brother and Sirius' house-elf and Sirius' life.

He turned and went back the way he'd come, now with Harry trotting at his side instead of Remus.

He remembered how Harry had snuck out of the castle on Halloween and sat quietly with Tonks, keeping Sirius company without pressing him to say a word.

Regulus' voice sounded in his ears again.

_Harry clings to you, perhaps, because thanks to you he has no one else. You are nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing to Harry, you can do nothing for him, he is better off without you, he wouldn't miss you if you were gone, he didn't miss you when you were gone…_

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to do this evening?" Sirius asked abruptly as he and Harry reached the cottage. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. He couldn't drown out Regulus' words with his own.

"Not really," said Harry. "I'm tired."

Of course he was. They had, after all, skipped sleeping the night before in favor of a starlit swim to a lake full of inferi.

"Maybe we'll just eat and listen to wizarding radio by the tree."

Harry raised the bag he carried. "I have food. Don't worry, I asked Dobby, not Kreacher. Is ham all right?"

Harry was so kind, and so wonderful, and no one in the world deserved Harry, least of all Sirius. "It's perfect."

Harry put the food on plates and set the table as Sirius struggled with the radio, which seemed not to want to tune properly beneath his suddenly clumsy fingers. "Celestina Warbeck or Christmas stories?"

"Mrs. Weasley loves Celestina Warbeck," said Harry. "What kind of Christmas stories?"

"All kinds. Some families swear by one broadcast, some swear by the other. My family, of course, listened to neither. Celestina Warbeck is a half-blood and some of the classic stories portray Muggles in a positive light."

After some minor deliberation they chose the stories, not least because the signal seemed clearer.

The first story involved a dozen students who were taking the Hogwarts Express home for Christmas when a snowy avalanche buried the train and left them stranded. Far too conveniently, none of the usual magical solutions to the problem worked, and a young witch and wizard by the names of Etheldreda and Adam were tasked with saving their peers' lives through sheer wit and bravery. Etheldreda meanwhile realized that she did not want to marry her fiancé, the rich and cowardly Firmin, but much preferred the quietly selfless Adam.

Harry rolled his eyes a bit, but he didn't suggest that they turn it off.

The next story was a rather silly murder mystery. It turned out that no one had died, after all, but determining as much involved both a large amount of mince pies and an insufferable aunt falling into a vat of dragon dung.

Harry, who like Sirius had experience with insufferable aunts, seemed to find that one most amusing.

The third story made Sirius uneasy with memory. _This_ story he vaguely recalled having heard as a child. He remembered the men meeting by chance on the road; the way the wizard who had little shared with the Muggle who had none; the way their families came together to cook the meal; the way the Muggle and wizard child were delighted to share a bar of chocolate.

It had to have been Uncle Alphard who'd let him listen to it. No one else in his family would have.

Harry was yawning widely by the end and so Sirius suggested that they both go upstairs and get ready for bed. He, himself, had no intention of sleeping that night- but he knew that if he didn't go to bed, Harry wouldn't go either.

* * *

An hour later, Sirius slipped into Harry's bedroom and placed two brightly wrapped packages on the foot of his bed.

That done, he ought to have left.

Instead, he stood and stared at Harry's pale face as Harry slept.

A year and a half had passed since their reunion. Harry's face was still strange but familiar. He looked so very much like James that a part of Sirius thought that he, too, must still be fifteen years old if the boy before him was fifteen. It was all the more true now that Harry's eyes, the perpetual reminder that James had finally found Lily only to lose her, were closed.

He knew very well that he was not fifteen. He could feel it in his own bones- not yet aching with age, but removed from the relentless energy of childhood.

He knew very well that Harry was not James. James' laughter about the fictitious aunt falling into a vat of dragon dung would not have been underscored by the bitter knowledge of what it was to be a member of a family that rejected everything you were.

He relaxed into the almost-normal feeling of being in two times at once. He had felt this way often when Félicité had directed him to remember the most horrible moments of his life as completely as he could.

He was fifteen and looking forward to Christmas morning with James and his parents.

He was thirty-six and ambivalent about spending Christmas with Harry and the scraps of family they'd cobbled together.

(Should he have sent Harry off to the Weasleys? From what he knew, Molly would have reveled in hosting Harry. But would Harry have felt like Sirius was rejecting him? Sirius would have felt like he'd been rejected, but Harry wasn't Sirius. Harry wasn't even James, who had been virtually incapable of feeling unwanted.)

He was fifteen, and he was thirty-six, and he was also in a different life where James had lived and James was the one looking down on his sleeping son.

Then came the recurring flash of irritation that Remus had found a way to save Sirius _but hadn't found a way to save James._

He knew Remus would have bought him a book of crossword puzzles for the holiday. That was what Moony had been doing on all special occasions: Christmas, birthday, first day of school, release from a sadistic prison where Sirius had been tortured year after year for a crime he hadn't committed, et cetera.

Sirius slipped out of Harry's room before Harry could awake with a start to find his privacy violated. He made his way back downstairs.

The package from Remus was easy to find: it was the best-wrapped, and Sirius knew Remus hadn't even used a house-elf to do it. Sirius opened it as carefully as he could and took the book of crossword puzzles in his shaking hands. There was another book, too: _The Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace_ , which Sirius had admired in Dumbledore's office that morning. How had Remus known that Sirius had wanted it before Sirius had known that Sirius had wanted it? Remus was obviously taking full advantage of his unfair knowledge of the future. Sirius liked that about him.

He knew his mind wasn't in a fit state to focus on an oral history of perhaps the most complex transfiguration in modern history, and so he set T _he Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace_ aside and summoned a quill to begin with the crossword puzzles.

_Contaminants. 10 letters._

He was helpless.

He didn't know the answer, and when he tapped his quill on the next clue, it didn't light up the way it was meant to. Either there was something wrong with the charm on the page or there was something wrong with him.

He laughed darkly. He knew which was most likely.

He set the book of crossword puzzles atop _The Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace_ and reached for the next package.

This one was from Andromeda. She had sent it by owl even though they had planned to see each other on Christmas day. The attached note explained why: there was something rather personal about the gift that not everyone would understand.

The package was cool and flat and ominous. Sirius ripped it open before he lost his nerve.

It was a framed photograph of the sky. The star Sirius shone more brightly than any of the others. The photograph had plainly been taken with a Muggle camera, adding just the right hint of rebellion to its tribute to their family's ancient naming conventions.

It was perfect.

He didn't need to ask what Andromeda was thinking. She was thinking that they were still a family and that they could reclaim their connection without carrying along all of the mania that came with it.

Fittingly, the photograph did not include the star Regulus. Alpha Leonis was only the twenty-first brightest star in the sky, and would be too far to the left of Canis Major in any event…

With a flick of his wand, he opened a drawer and summoned the photographs he'd taken from Grimmauld Place the year before when he'd been hunting for a present for Harry.

Regulus and Sirius as tiny boys standing in a crib. Regulus and Sirius posed with their parents. Regulus and Sirius posed with their cousins. Regulus with the Slytherin Quidditch team.

The last photograph had been taken less than a year before Regulus' death. What on earth had he been thinking when he'd looked into the camera, surrounded by his teammates? (At least three of them had been Death Eaters- two dead, one in Azkaban.) Had he had doubts about Voldemort already, as Slughorn had suggested? Or had he only changed his ways when Voldemort had abused Kreacher?

Was there any way to know?

* * *

Sirius was still staring at the photograph when Harry's overly-athletic footsteps sounded on the stairs.

"You started without me!" Harry complained. It was rather a hypocritical complaint, as Harry was wearing the watch Sirius had left on his bed. Harry was unimpressed when Sirius pointed it out, disdainfully informing Sirius that presents left on one's bed differed greatly from presents left under the tree. Sirius made note of the fact that Harry was just making shit up. Harry was unperturbed.

"The watch," Sirius began, ignoring Harry's protestations because he didn't really care. "You're less than two years from the _important_ watch, but I've noticed that you have a habit of breaking your cheap watches by wearing them in the water or to play Quidditch or wrestle trolls or whatever else you do."

"I hardly ever wrestle trolls," said Harry. "And what do you mean, _important_ watch?"

It was an innocent question and a knife to his heart. Harry should have been raised in the wizarding world where he belonged. Harry should have known about traditional coming-of-age gifts.

"You come of age when you turn seventeen. The traditional gift is a watch. In some families, it's an heirloom passed from father to son and mother to daughter, a bit like your invisibility cloak. In other families, the parents save up for years to buy the most expensive thing their child will ever own. It matters. It really, really matters, even to people who don't set much store by material things most of the time. Mine came from your grandparents, of course. On the back it said _with love from Fleamont, Euphemia, and James_ . Every time I looked at it, I knew that I had someone even though my own family considered me worse than dead."

Harry nodded solemnly. "You lost it when you went to Azkaban?"

"I lost it in a fight about a year before that. Death Eater got the watch, but he didn't get me."

That was when Harry's eyes fell on the photograph in Sirius' lap. He grabbed for it before Sirius had a chance to hide it. A keening curiosity overtook Harry's face. "Regulus was a seeker," he said. "He's sitting in the middle of the front row. That's where the seeker sits. That's where I sit."

Exhausted anger bubbled up in Sirius for the umpteenth time that day. "So what if he played seeker? That doesn't mean anything. One of every seven players is a seeker."

"Not really," said Harry. "Chasers and beaters are always getting injured, and you can switch out the players who worry about the quaffles and the bludgers. But seekers-"

"If you feel so connected to the other seekers of the world, perhaps the Malfoys will have you over for Christmas dinner and you can commune with Narcissa's brat."

"He's not really a seeker. He just bought his way onto the team," said Harry airily, apparently completely unaffected by Sirius' anger. "I'll start breakfast, shall I?"

Sirius would have felt far less like human rubbish if Harry had yelled back at him.

He might have felt better if Harry had burst into tears. Instead, Harry was… managing him. Handling him. Forgiving Sirius' ridiculous outbursts the way James always had, except Harry wasn't James, and Sirius wasn't fifteen years old.

Harry cracked eggs into a bowl.

(Years of neglect interspersed with indentured servitude had turned Harry into an excellent cook.)

"Open the present I got for you, would you?" asked Harry casually. "It's right over there."

Harry had no business being the mature one in this relationship, but that was exactly who Harry was.

Sirius reached for the present and flipped it over in his hands. It was bulkier and heavier than the gifts he'd received from Remus and Andromeda. It had the feeling of youth about it even though Harry wasn't James and Sirius wasn't fifteen.

Sirius slid one finger under the paper.

"Just rip it," Harry directed. He was cooking bacon now, as naturally as if he'd been cooking bacon since he'd been tall enough to see the pan.

Sirius ripped it.

Harry had given him a motorcycle cover and a motorcycle stand.

Sirius' throat tightened.

This was ridiculous.

This was backwards.

"Thank you, Harry. It's perfect."

Harry grinned and slid eggs and bacon onto plates.

Sirius had no way of saying anything beyond _thank you_ , which wasn't enough.

"You know we can return the watch and the boots if they aren't to your taste," Sirius said instead. "You aren't stuck with them just because they're what I picked."

"No," said Harry. "I like them." And he didn't say more than that, but Sirius could see that they certainly suited him as they prepared to Apparate to Andromeda's house.

* * *

One of the Hogwarts owls swooped importantly through the front window just as they were leaving. Harry gave the bird a friendly stroke with his left hand as he detached the letter with his right.

Sirius read over Harry's shoulder.

_Dear Harry,_

_I have it on good authority that Horace Slughorn, former professor of potions, will be visiting the home of Ted and Andromeda Tonks today. I do not doubt that he wishes to see you at least as much as he wishes to see the Tonks family._

_Please do me the favor of flattering Horace should the opportunity arise. For reasons I shall not explain today, you and I may both have need of him._

_Warmest Regards,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

_P. S. Please do not believe that this letter extinguishing itself once you have read it reflects negatively upon the confidence I have in you._

And indeed, the note burst into flames as Harry and Sirius read the last words of the postscript.

"I'm not going to like Horace Slughorn, am I?" Harry asked.

"He's not so bad," said Sirius, but inwardly he was sorry that old Sluggy had decided to expand the guest list beyond the strict limitations of People Sirius Actively Loved.

* * *

When they arrived, though, Sirius quickly learned that Slughorn was not alone in intruding upon their peaceful gathering. Tonks had invited both Mad-Eye and Kingsley. One of Ted's brothers had joined them; so had one of Ted's colleagues. Andromeda's school friend Kimberly, who Sirius vaguely remembered meeting in a past life, had come to visit as well. Every so often Tonks gazed at Kimberly with visible hunger for approval. Kimberly had obviously been an honorary aunt to Tonks for all of her life.

Sirius remembered Regulus' words.

_Little Nymphadora looks at you with curiosity, and Andromeda with nostalgia, but they lived the best years of their lives without you._

Even though Sirius had no reason to dislike any of Anna's guests, dinner was painful.

He watched as Harry flattered Slughorn on Dumbledore's command. To Sirius, Harry's distaste for Slughorn was palpable. Slughorn was dismissive of Remus, and in Harry's mind that was nothing less than criminal.

Sirius was jealous of Harry's affection for Remus, and it was ridiculous and he knew it but he still felt it.

At long last, the dinner had been eaten and Tonks casually asked whether Sirius wanted to duel. Sirius said something vaguely witty about not wanting to hurt her in front of her parents on Christmas and offered to do the washing up instead.

Anything to get away from the sickening happiness that flooded the room.

"You don't need to help," said Andromeda warmly. "It won't take-"

"I'd like to discuss something with you," said Sirius more bluntly than he'd intended.

"All right, then," said Andromeda, and Kingsley offered to duel with Tonks if she really felt like being knocked into her parents' pond today.

Andromeda and Remus and Harry and Tonks all knew that Sirius was teetering on the edge of _something_ , and it seemed that Kingsley had figured it out too.

Sirius was past caring.

* * *

"Was the present too much?" asked Andromeda when they were alone.

"No," said Sirius honestly. "It was perfect. It was… interesting timing."

"A gift on Christmas is interesting timing?"

"I learned something about Regulus yesterday," he began, and before he knew it he was telling Andromeda (almost) everything. How Regulus had died trying to defeat Voldemort. How a dark object had taken the form of Regulus and taunted him. How Kreacher had been involved.

"Was I blind about Regulus?" he asked as he took a grateful gulp of the wine Andromeda had somehow maneuvered into his hand. "Was I the only one who couldn't see him?"

"He was a Death Eater. That's what you saw. That's what you needed to see to keep yourself alive. If he backed out of being a Death Eater because he had an odd affection for that house-elf- rather than because he thought that perhaps he oughtn't murder people like my husband for the great crime of being a wizard born to Muggle parents- he was still a Death Eater."

"You're the only one who thinks that," said Sirius quietly. This time he took a slightly smaller gulp of wine and tried to appreciate its earthy undertone.

"Almost no one understands what it is to have a sociopath for a sibling." Andromeda waved her wand at the bottle of wine, which obediently emptied itself into her glass. She, too, took a longer drink than was strictly socially acceptable.

"I don't know that he was a-"

"He was a Death Eater. Death Eaters are sociopaths. A human being, whether wizard or Muggle, does not dedicate himself to the extermination of other human beings based on arbitrary criteria unless he is a sociopath. It doesn't matter if he selflessly loved the helpless family servant or whether he plaited your hair when you were a child!"

Sirius tried to swallow his laughter. "Regulus did not plait my hair," he informed Andromeda. "And I'm a bit surprised that Bella plaited yours."

Andromeda shrugged gracefully. "Sometimes, when we were very young."

The wine swirled in his glass. Wine and glass were separate, and yet not. It was magic.

The wall had almost turned into glass for Sirius when he'd been nine years old. Bellatrix had run to him, not caring that she was half-dressed.

"Bella did try to comfort me that time I nearly blew up Grimmauld Place with untrained magic," Sirius mused. "It's the last time I remember liking her, even though I pretended I didn't."

Andromeda laughed. "I remember that. Bellatrix was loyal. She was protective. She was brilliant. She would also murder my husband and my daughter and you and your godson if she had a ghost of a chance."

"I suppose we all have light and dark inside of us," Sirius admitted. It was easier to say it to Andromeda than to Harry or Slughorn or an obnoxious Horcrux.

"Regulus-Alpha Leonis- isn't really a single star. It's a multiple star system."

"I did get an O in astronomy, you know."

"I should certainly hope so. You ought to have been able to pass your NEWT before you started Hogwarts. Back when Grimmauld Place couldn't decide whether to take direction from you because you were the proper heir but completely untrained."

He felt his head on Bella's chest.

He felt Regulus' hand in his.

The future Death Eaters.

How he'd hated them.

He didn't say anything.

"I know," said Andromeda. She split the last of the bottle of wine between their glasses.

_**To be continued.** _


	70. The Moon

The start of the new term came far too quickly for Remus.

It was too soon for the holidays to be over- and with them, any excuse for delaying in telling Harry about the final Horcrux.

It was too soon to take Harry away from Sirius. On Christmas Day, Harry had quietly told Remus that Sirius hadn't slept in at least 48 hours and Remus had considered forcibly dosing Sirius with dreamless sleep potion. (Thankfully, it had not been necessary.)

It was too soon to face Dolores Umbridge.

It was too soon for another full moon. He hated it when the moon fell in the first days of the term. He'd hated it as a student and he hated it as a professor.

* * *

Snape, likewise, made more than a few comments regarding how very busy he was at the start of the term and how unreasonably burdensome it was for him to brew the Wolfsbane Potion as well. Remus didn't argue. He knew that it was true.

"Is Black already hidden in your office?" Snape asked in a low voice as he handed Remus the final goblet of potion.

"He is."

"Good. I believe that _that woman_ is still lurking about. You cannot allow her to see anything that might make her suspicious."

Remus swallowed the potion- disgusting, as always- and contemplated for the umpteenth time how truly bizarre it was to have Severus Snape on his side. "Thank you, Severus."

"Do not flatter yourself and imagine that I'm doing this for you." Snape's black eyes sparked. "I merely wish to have certain things eliminated in a timely manner, and at the moment your miserable presence is required to achieve that end."

He held the empty goblet out to Snape. "It's nice to be required, don't you agree?"

"I do not."

At another time, Remus might have laughed. Tonight, though, the end was too near for anything but utter sincerity. "Then I hope that you soon find out what it is not to be required, if that is what you truly wish for."

"Do stop talking like an ironic seer in a tale of Beedle the Bard."

It might be his last chance to thank Severus properly, or even to apologize for having believed that he had deliberately maimed George Weasley. "I know it has been difficult for you-"

"Leave my office!"

And Remus left.

* * *

Sirius was, of course, awaiting him in his own office. He had considered asking Sirius not to come; he couldn't give Umbridge and her spies any additional reasons to be suspicious. But he had concluded that Sirius' need for company after destroying Voldemort's locket was more important than delaying the inevitable.

Besides, as everyone knew, Sirius was _exceptionally_ talented when it came to not getting caught.

Presently, Sirius was curiously flipping through the notes Remus had laid out on his table. Remus wanted whoever took over his classes for the balance of the year to be properly prepared, and so he had summarized what each class had studied, which lessons remained, and the particular needs of most of the students.

"You understand that this level of organization is an illness, correct?" asked Sirius. "They make potions for this sort of thing."

"I believe Severus doesn't have any interest in brewing further potions for me."

Sirius clenched his jaw. " _Severus_ . Don't tell me you've changed your mind about the man who sold a baby's life to Voldemort and regretted it only because that baby's mother happened to be Lily Evans Potter."

"We don't know that that's precisely what happened," said Remus with a sigh, even though he was reasonably sure that that was, indeed, precisely what had happened. "And we don't know how his views have changed since that time. Some of the things you believed when you were a teenager-"

" _Stop_ !"

Remus stopped and returned to the task of gathering the notes together.

"I'm tired of it," Sirius continued to Remus' surprise. One generally didn't expect Sirius Black to elaborate unprompted once he'd given an order and that order had been followed. "I don't want to hear anything else about teenage Death Eaters for at least a year. Speaking of teenage Death Eaters, you forgot to put in your notes about Narcissa's brat that he's basically a spineless coward who tries to buy his way into whatever he wants."

"I assumed that the next professor would realize that as soon as he or she saw the name _Malfoy_ ."

Sirius accepted the weak joke as the peace offering that it was. "He's really an above-average student?"

"Why shouldn't he be? Neither of his parents are fools, and they've given him every advantage."

"I just hoped the Black inbreeding would rear its ugly head with him."

"You aren't _that_ inbred, Sirius."

"You're too kind."

It didn't matter how kind he was or wasn't. He was a werewolf, and he was working illegally, and it was the night of the full moon, and his borrowed time had almost certainly run out.

It was almost a relief when the transformation came. Everything that could be done that night had been done. There would be no more talking: no more searching for the right words to thank Severus or Sirius. Not that Sirius, at least, needed words or wanted thanks.

Trapped in his wolf body, his human mind ran through the notes he'd left for his successor. The first years were just starting to do more practical lessons. The third years needed to review hinkypunks; on the whole, they were too easily distracted. The fifth years were well-prepared for their OWLs already, and the review sessions needed to be mixed with intense practice at non-verbal casting to challenge the stronger students. The seventh years were as a whole a brilliant group, and the problem was that far too many of them knew it…

He began to pace the room, loathing as always the click of his claws on the floor.

There was nothing else he could do tonight.

Sirius tried to give him a scratch behind his ears, but it didn't feel as good as it usually did. He had a terrible urge to snarl at Sirius.

"There's nothing more you can do, Moony," said Sirius, not unkindly. "Not tonight. You might as well relax until morning."

Because that was what Sirius did when he was terrified and frustrated?

"Fine," said Sirius at last, and with a pop he became the great black dog. Almost before he had transformed, Sirius leapt atop Remus and tackled him.

The ensuing wrestling match was, at least, a distraction until the locks on his door rattled and sprang open.

* * *

Dolores Umbridge entered, flanked by two Aurors. Both Aurors has their wands at the ready.

Remus froze.

Sirius transformed and drew his wand.

"Don't hurt the werewolf unless you need to," said Umbridge in a sickeningly-sweet voice. From the expression on her face, Remus could tell that she thought herself very generous. "He will be punished by the law. He will set a better example in Azkaban than in a graveyard."

"Does Dumbledore know you're here?" Sirius asked.

"The Ministry does not need Headmaster Dumbledore's permission to arrest a dangerous creature who is in violation of the law," Umbridge simpered.

"Kreacher!" The elf appeared at Sirius' feet. Without taking dropping his gaze from the Aurors, Sirius addressed Kreacher in a remarkably neutral tone. "Kreacher, please report what you see here to Headmaster Dumbledore right away. Wake him up if you must, though I expect you needn't this close to sunrise."

"Belay that order, elf!" snapped Umbridge.

Kreacher, of course, ignored her and vanished with an almost-polite "as Master wishes."

"You would think Dumbledore would have asked the house-elves to have a bit more respect for the Ministry," Umbridge sniffed.

"He's my elf. He merely works at Hogwarts." Sirius' voice remained pleasantly neutral, and only an experienced fighter would have been able to see that Sirius was maintaining a dueling stance. The Aurors, though, were experienced fighters themselves. They, too, looked ready to attack.

Remus rather liked Sirius' chances three-on-one, actually, but it was better not to find out if he was right.

What Remus didn't like was that his role in this drama- this drama that centered around his very right to exist- was to stay still. If he gave the Aurors and Umbridge the slightest excuse, they would attack him. They might have attacked him already, in spite of Umbridge's protestations that he was worth more in Azkaban than dead, had Sirius not been there to witness his arrest.

It was for Sirius' own safety, then, that Remus cowered behind his friend while Sirius faced down two of the best trained wizard-catchers in Britain and one sadistic blood purist.

_They also serve who only stand and wait._

A timeless sentiment. It had not, Remus suspected, grown any easier to accept with time.

Then a familiar shudder ran down his back. The sun was beginning to rise. In a few moments' time, he would be human, and his transformation- that most personal of all things- would be witnessed by three uninvited guests.

No.

* * *

He could hear voices in the corridor. Kreacher's message had been delivered and Dumbledore had decided to summon both Minerva and Severus. Remus wasn't certain who he least wanted to witness his distorted nudity: his onetime professor or his old rival.

Not that he had a choice.

(If he'd had a choice, it wouldn't have been any of them. It would have been Filius Flitwick, who had first-hand experience with living inside a body that made strangers feel free to stare.)

* * *

There was a scuffle and some shouting during the brief moments of pained blindness and cracking bones. When Remus was able to observe the room properly again, Sirius had covered him with a quilt, draped a robe over his shoulders, and surreptitiously pressed a wand into his hand.

"… Utterly reckless," Umbridge was saying. "Half the children in this school might have been murdered tonight. Or worse than murdered- _turned_ ."

"Every student at this school is perfectly safe, and has been perfectly safe for the past two and a half years. When Wolfsbane Potion is taken properly-"

"And who exactly is responsible for seeing that Wolfsbane Potion is taken properly? The beast itself?" She cast a look of utter revulsion at Remus; the two Aurors followed suit.

Remus didn't bother to be offended. No one knew it other than Sirius and Dumbledore, but he had, in another time and place, forgotten to take the potion and put students in danger.

The worst thing about Dolores Umbridge was that she wasn't entirely wrong all of the time.

No one seemed to care that Remus hadn't said anything. His throat was dry and raw from the transformation; perhaps he wouldn't have been able to speak if he'd tried.

"Who is to say the potion was even brewed properly?" Umbridge continued. "It is an immensely complex potion, so much so that it cannot reasonably be mass-produced or widely distributed. There is no way to tell whether it will even be effective on any given night." One of the Aurors was nodding sagely. Remus didn't recognize him. He hoped that the Aurors were not Dora's friends.

"Professor Snape is one of the most skilled potioneers in the world, if not the most skilled of all. If anything had gone wrong with the potion, he would have noticed and corrected the error."

"Is that true, Professor Snape? You believe that that _thing_ is harmless?"

Severus' lip curled into a sneer, and Remus knew that any slim hope of ever securing any sort of pleasant relationship with the man had evaporated. Severus was now in the position of arguing that Remus was safe or arguing that his potion was imperfect.

He was _not_ going to tell anyone that _any_ of his potions were less than works of art.

"I believe that the potion was properly brewed and worked as it was intended to work."

"Every time?"

"Every time."

Umbridge sniffed. "It doesn't matter. The werewolf is in violation of the Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Auror Gordon and Auror Robards, please remove him."

So that was who they were. Gawain Robards was next in line for Scrimgeour's position and Dora hated him, not least because he had formally reprimanded her for killing Igor Karkaroff in self-defense. Dora had a more complicated relationship with Maria Gordon, but had been less than pleased with her as of late.

Robards looped one arm around Remus and dragged him to his feet while Gordon kept her wand trained on Remus' heart. Under his robe, Remus let his fingers clench the wand Sirius had given him. It wasn't his own wand, which was good, because it would likely be lost between here and Azkaban. His own wand, then, was hidden and under Sirius' protection.

For all of his comments about calming down and jokes about Remus' class notes, Sirius had prepared for just this eventuality.

Umbridge had prepared, too. "Headmaster, I am not ignorant of the awkward position in which I have placed you. I know that the Defense Against the Dark Arts position is infamously difficult to fill, and you were reduced to hiring this… creature because no one else was willing to take the job. Therefore, I would like to volunteer my services. I can make arrangements with the Ministry to begin teaching tomorrow."

"Thank you for your kind offer," said Dumbledore. "But I made arrangements as soon as the house-elf notified me of Professor Lupin's arrest."

Beside Remus, Maria Gordon smirked almost imperceptibly. Her wand, still aimed at his heart, never wavered.

"I should thank you doubly for giving me the idea," Dumbledore continued. "I understand that when you interviewed Professor Snape last term, you intimated that he would prefer to teach Defense rather than Potions. I can sometimes be a foolish old man, and perhaps I felt that because Severus is an undisputed genius when it comes to potions, Potions was the subject he was best suited to teach. But it occurs to me that I, myself, taught both Defense and Transfiguration before I became Headmaster, and I believe I benefitted greatly from the variety. Severus has graciously agreed to teach Defense this term."

"That leaves the Potions position vacant. Surely Professor Snape is unable to teach two classes simultaneously."

"I would hesitate to place any limits on the heights Severus may reach. However, I happened to have the opportunity to speak with Horace Slughorn recently. You will remember him, High Inquisitor Umbridge, as he was your own Head of House when you were in school. Professor Sughorn recently made the acquaintance of Harry Potter at a Christmas gathering, and young Harry was most impressed by Professor Slughorn and did not hesitate to express his admiration. I'm afraid he may have flattered Horace most shamelessly; I've no idea why he took it into his mind to do so. In any event, Professor Slughorn has no objection to returning to his old post as Potions Master for a term to make certain that Harry and his classmates are properly prepared for their OWLs."

For a moment or two, Umbridge's mouth hung open. She looked more like a toad than ever. "It is wonderful that you are so well prepared, Headmaster Dumbledore."

Dumbledore inclined his head graciously. "I have learned a trick or two in my many years at this school. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned not to underestimate the willingness of those around me to provide aid in difficult circumstances."

Once again, Umbridge was rendered blissfully speechless. She forgot to make her voice sweet and girlish when she recovered herself. "Gordon! Robards! Did I not ask you to remove the werewolf to the holding cell at the Ministry so that we can complete the paperwork transferring him to Azkaban? You will both swear affidavits to what you saw this morning and file them before noon!"

The Aurors nodded, and Robards dragged Remus roughly toward the door. Remus didn't want to look at the others as he left- didn't want to see the pity on Minerva's face or the concealed anger on Sirius' face or the triumph on Severus' face- but he raised his head anyway. If anyone needed to warn him of a plan to which he was not yet privy, he needed to look up to see the signal.

He saw nothing. Nothing, that is, other than pity on Minerva's face and concealed anger on Sirius' face and triumph on Severus' face.

They passed through the door to Remus' outer office- who was going to mind the grindylow? he'd neglected to make arrangements- and then through the door to the long corridor. Far in the distance, Remus saw a flash of trainers and a suit of armor righting itself after having been rudely brushed into the wall.

He wondered how much Harry had overheard, tucked away under his invisibility cloak.

He wondered why Robards and Gordon weren't turning aside to take the shortest possible route to the entrance hall and the great front doors of the castle. He nearly asked, but his throat was too dry to speak.

In the end, he got his answer without asking. Robards and Gordon planned to parade him straight through the Great Hall while the students were at breakfast. They were going to thrust him before his students while he was half-dressed and too weak to stand on his own.

Many of the students weren't properly awake at breakfast, Remus reminded himself. Many of them stared bleary-eyed at their toast, completely unaware of their surroundings. Many of them wouldn't notice as long the Slytherin students at the far table didn't make too much of a fuss as he passed by.

There was a roar as the three of them entered the Great Hall.

There was no chance of the students failing to notice, then.

Every student was on his or her feet, and every one of them was screaming.

He recalled the nightmares he'd had as an eleven-year-old whose classmates had no inkling of his darkest secret. His expulsion from Hogwarts had always looked something like this. The only wonder was that it had taken so long.

He heard some of the shouts he'd expected to hear. _Monster_ , of course. _Good riddance_ , and _enjoy Azkaban,_ oddly polite.

There were a few more organized chants, as was to be expected from children who had spent their young lives memorizing myriad songs in support of their favorite Quidditch teams.

_Kill the wolf! Kill the wolf!_

But this was quickly drowned out by a louder, stronger chant. _Kill the cow, keep the wolf! Kill the cow, keep the wolf!_

_Umbridge is a cow! Umbridge is a cow!_

It was a surprisingly mild insult. But then, it was early in the morning.

They were nearly at the door before eggs, sausage, and porridge began to fly through the air, guided by some neat levitation charms to land almost entirely on Remus' Auror escorts rather than on Remus himself.

Gordon and Robards were forced to stop near the end of the Gryffindor table so that Robards could properly cast a shield charm around himself. Remus could see now that Harry had actually climbed onto the table, and was doubtless responsible in no small part for this riot.

Remus looked at the students closest to him and pointed at the carafe of pumpkin juice. Harry was watching him and jumped to help, but Namrata Vemulakonda was closer and handed him her own full goblet.

The juice soothed his throat. "Thank you, Namrata," he said. "See that someone takes care of my grindylow, would you?"

"Yes, Sir," she said, and the Aurors hurried to rush him out the door.

The crowd of students followed, booing and jeering. There were professors in the Great Hall who ought to have stopped them, but no one seemed to be making much of an effort.

They reached the edge of Hogwarts grounds and with a crack of hasty Apparition Remus found himself in a musty-smelling holding cell. The scent of eggs and porridge on the Aurors' robes mixed unpleasantly with dust and damp.

It was oddly quiet; the students' shouting still rang in his ears.

Robards finally relieved him of the wand he'd concealed beneath his ill-fasted robe.

Remus didn't care. He was tired, and Namrata's pumpkin juice was sweet in his mouth, and he sank to the camp bed in the corner of the cell to rest.

* * *

When Remus opened his eyes again, it was to the sound of Dolores Umbridge clearing her throat.

All things considered, he had had more pleasant wake-ups in his life.

"You know that this is better than you deserve," she said. Statement, not question. Whisper, not shout.

"You don't need to say anything. We both know that I am right and that I have done the right thing by removing you from the children you would have harmed, as you were harmed, once, when you were a child. Do you remember what it is like to be human, or were you too young when it happened? Don't try to answer. If your time in Azkaban does allow you to feel regrets, though, please know that the Ministry will use every means necessary to undo the damage that you have done. We will set those children to rights, from the champion Cedric Diggory all the way down to little Namrata Vemulakonda with her pumpkin juice."

Umbridge mispronounced Namrata's name terribly, and that more than anything else was what made Remus remember that he didn't agree with her.

She left and he went back to sleep.

* * *

He was awakened again by the first Howler from an angry parent.

_YOU DISGUSTING COWARD! HOW DARE YOU REFUSE TO REGISTER AND PUT INNOCENT CHILDREN AT RISK? HOW DARE YOU PRETEND TO BE A HUMAN BEING? YOU WILL NEVER BE A HUMAN BEING!_

He was too sleepy to guess at who had sent it before the envelope exploded.

* * *

He was more prepared for the second Howler.

_I HOPE THEY BRING BACK THE DEMENTORS JUST FOR YOU!_

He thought that it was probably Bertrand Cotterill's family who had sent that one. Oddly, Bertrand was in Namrata's House and year. They had never liked each other, he recalled.

* * *

_YOU DIRTY VILE ANIMAL! AZKABAN IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU! I HOPE YOU DIE!_

By the third Howler, he decided that he didn't care enough to guess who had sent it after all. He was never going to teach at Hogwarts again. With the exception of Harry and his friends, he would never see the students again.

If he didn't survive Azkaban- if he had a bad transformation without Wolfsbane Potion and no one was there to heal his wounds- he wouldn't even see Harry again.

What did it matter that most people hated him and a few people loved him?

* * *

_YOU USED DARK MAGIC TO ABUSE INNOCENT CHILDREN AND IF THE MINISTRY DOESN'T BRING YOU TO JUSTICE I WILL!_

By the fourth Howler, he was just annoyed that he wasn't allowed to sleep for more than a few moments. He had hoped to have a rest before his transfer to Azkaban. He needed to be ready to come face-to-face with Bellatix Lestrange, who had once killed Sirius. And Antonin Dolohov, who had once killed Remus himself. And Peter Pettigrew, who was as responsible as anyone for the murder of Lily and James.

* * *

_YOU ARE A FLITHY BEAST! YOU DESERVE TO DIE! YOU ARE A FILTHY BEAST! YOU DESERVE TO DIE!_

With the fifth Howler, he wondered whether any of these people really believed that they were telling him something he had never thought about himself.

It was strange, really, how similar the Howlers were to the Horcrux that had tortured Sirius. At least, unlike Sirius, Remus didn't have an audience as enchanted voices serenaded him with his worst fears and insecurities.

At least, he didn't have an audience until his escort to Azkaban arrived.

He looked up to see Dora and Kingsley standing side by side in the corridor.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: They also serve who only stand and wai t is originally from the John Milton sonnet "When I Consider How My Light is Spent," though obviously quoted widely and in varying contexts.
> 
> Author's Note: I received several reviews complimenting me on Namrata Vemulakonda's name. I shared this with several readers via direct message, but I may as well say it to everyone: her name came from a random name generator. Random name generators can be specific to the point of letting you set parameters that a character was born in 1983 in the United Kingdom to parents originally from India. My favorite random name generator is name-generator dot org dot uk, and my backup is behindthename dot com .


	71. Tonks Interlude I

Tonks was furious.

She was furious at Dolores Umbridge for creating the disgusting, bigoted law in the first place.

She was furious at Gordon and Robards for the way they'd come into the Auror Office complaining about being pelted with breakfast foods by unruly students rather than hanging their heads in shame because they'd humiliated a blameless man.

She was furious at Dumbledore for not forcing Remus to step down as the Defense professor as soon as it had become clear that Umbridge had her beady little eyes on him. At the very least, Dumbledore could have hidden Remus from Umbridge instead of leaving him exposed for the most vile woman on the planet to find.

Above all, she was furious at herself. She never should have worried about a little thing like time travel when Remus' intentions had obviously been completely pure and he had never pressured her in any way. He never pressured anyone in any way. He was thoughtful and compassionate and generous and almost too careful. _No wonder you're so desperate to pretend that I'm her,_ she'd said. _You want your son back and I'm the only person who can give him to you._

She'd been wrong. He hadn't been pretending anything. He'd just loved her, and she'd loved him, and now it was almost too late to tell him. The sentence for violating the Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was three months in Azkaban, but might that not be a lifetime sentence if there was no one there to bring him Wolfsbane Potion or staunch the bleeding when he clawed himself?

 _Calm down,_ Kingsley told her no fewer than five times as they made the trek from the Auror Office to the holding cell. _It's good that you and I have this assignment. We don't want someone who doesn't know him to have it. Compartmentalize, Auror Tonks._

She'd asked Kingsley whether he'd known about Remus before the arrest, and Kingsley had been annoyingly noncommittal. Kingsley was a good man and she liked him more each time she worked with him, but he held his cards frustratingly close to his chest.

Now she stood before Remus' cell. He looked weak and ill. He needed someone to fuss over him, not someone to escort him to Azkaban of all places.

_Compartmentalize, Auror Tonks._

She stepped back, both mentally and physically, and let herself observe.

The cell was secure. No one had tampered with the lock. The prisoner was a safe distance from the door. He was not visibly injured, although he slumped slightly as if exhausted. The camp bed in the corner of the cell had been slept upon. The red remnants of Howlers littered the floor; a small pile of letters, unopened, sat beside the mess.

"You listened to the Howlers, but you didn't open the letters?" she asked.

His smile was weak and humorless. "I could hardly avoid the Howlers. As to the letters, I do not need to read them to know what they say. You may have them if you wish. They may reassure you that some decisions you made recently were quite correct."

She placed the letters in her bag. They wouldn't convince her that the decisions to which he referred were correct, but it was better that she read them. If anyone had threatened him, she wanted to know. If anyone had spoken poorly of him, he didn't deserve to see it.

"We've been directed to ask why you were in possession of a wand originally sold to the late Regulus Black when you were arrested," said Kingsley in his deep voice. Kingsley could make an interrogation sound like polite dinner conversation.

"It was given to me by Regulus' brother, Sirius."

It was the right sort of answer. Polite and succinct. No obvious evasiveness; no voluntary elaboration. It was the sort of answer a man who was both intelligent and well-prepared would give.

"That sounds reasonable to me," said Kingsley. "Please step to the far wall of the cell. I am going to bind your hands, and then I am going to unlock the door and approach you. I will keep my hand on your arm while Auror Tonks walks behind us with her wand trained on your heart. If you attempt to escape, Auror Tonks will use whatever force is necessary to stop you."

They had all been trained to say exactly the same thing in this situation. There was usually a certain comfort in hearing a fellow Auror recite the rules. It reminded her that they were a team and that she was never alone.

"Auror Shacklebolt." Kingsley didn't turn to look at her- to avert his eyes from the prisoner would have been to break protocol- but she knew that he was listening. "Would you permit me to escort the prisoner while you stand guard?"

"As you wish," said Kingsley, and she silently sighed with relief. The most junior Auror normally acted as the guard, but Kingsley wasn't the sort to stand on ceremony without a reason.

She bound Remus as gently as she could and unlocked the door. Once inside, she looped her arm through his.

For the briefest moment, she could imagine that they were just about to step into the sunlight for a stroll through a beautiful park. He'd dazzle her with his intelligence. She'd make him laugh. They'd plan to take a holiday to some exotic spot neither one of them had ever visited before, unless they wanted to tour each other's favorite childhood places…

But she was on duty and they were in the middle of the Ministry. It was not the time for daydreams.

"We're going to walk to the end of the corridor and then take the stairs to the front hall. We will step onto the Portkey Platform. You do not need to touch the Portkey, although you may. There will be a five second delay before we will be transported to a rocky area near the water."

"Understood, Auror Tonks." She searched his tone for sarcasm or secret messages or confessions of undying love. She found none. He walked with her as detachedly as if she had been Kingsley or any of her colleagues.

Before the Portkey even deposited them beside the boat that would take them to Azkaban, she decided to let him run. He didn't belong in Azkaban. She hadn't spent half her life striving to become an Auror to put men like Remus in prison.

"Auror Shacklebolt, would you inspect the perimeter, please?"

"Yes, Auror Tonks." It wasn't such an unusual request. No one would hold it against Kingsley that he had agreed. No one would blame Kingsley when their prisoner escaped. His conduct would be above reproach.

The instant Kingsley was out of sight, Tonks wordlessly removed the bind from Remus' hands. "Go," she told Remus quietly. "It'll be difficult without a wand, but if you follow the coast straight north, there's-"

"Dora," he interrupted quietly, and he was Remus again, not a prisoner. "I won't escape."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"For one thing, I would never do that to you or to Kingsley."

"I want you to run, and Kingsley won't be blamed. At least, he won't if you go before he comes back!"

"You are needed in the Ministry far more than I am needed outside Azkaban."

"That's just stupid," said Tonks eloquently.

"It isn't," he said with the smallest of smiles. "We are in a far more precarious situation than most people know. If Lord Voldemort should rise again-"

"He won't. He won't rise again because of you."

"He won't rise again because the Department of Aurors employs people like you and Kingsley. Should Dumbledore need to reinstate the Order of the Phoenix, he will need well-positioned spies with the skills to recognize and combat dark magic."

"Dumbledore." Her anger bloomed anew. "I wouldn't join the Order of the Phoenix if that arrogant old man begged me."

"He's very fond of you."

"He claims to be fond of you, but instead of allowing you to step down from your post at Christmas, he left you there to be arrested by Umbridge as soon as her horrible law took effect."

"Dumbledore did give me the opportunity to step down," said Remus, sounding genuinely surprised that Tonks had thought otherwise. "He offered several times. I told him that I was determined to stay. I chose to stay because every month that I had with Harry and the other students- every week- every day- was a chance to protect them and teach them and help them grow. I lost my own son, Dora." His voice broke horribly. "Teddy. I sacrificed Teddy so that the other children could have a better world. I couldn't abandon them until I was forced to do it. We're so very close, Dora. We're nearly there. I've had so much that I never should have had. I had to take the risk. I did, and I shall suffer the consequences."

"If you wouldn't take Dumbledore's offer because you have a martyr complex and you feel guilty about Teddy-" She nearly choked on the name. It was a good name. It was, could have been, should have been, might be, her child's name. "If you wouldn't resign of your own volition, Dumbledore should have forced you. He was prepared to replace you anyway. As loyal as you are to him, he ought to have saved you from yourself."

"It isn't Dumbledore's job to save me from myself." He was composed and serene and she hated him for it. "Dumbledore may have his own reasons for allowing me to go to Azkaban. I do not know or care what they are."

 _"I do not know or care what they are,"_ she mimicked. "Remus Lupin, you are the most infuriating man on the planet. You are at the center of a terrible miscarriage of justice and you don't even care."

"I do care. I simply care more about other things. I care about defeating Voldemort before he rises again. I care about giving Harry and Sirius the peace they deserve. I care about you and your happiness."

"Then run away with me." She said it quickly, breathlessly, and she knew it was right. "We'll both go."

"You are needed where you are. I wouldn't take you from your parents or your friends even if I would take you from the Aurors. My sentence is for three months. If at the end of that time you're still inclined to-"

She silenced him with a kiss. His lips were parched, but they were soft and clever and warm. She twined her fingers in his greying hair as she poured every ounce of anger and regret and love into the kiss. "I love you," she said when she pulled back, breathing heavily. "Hold onto that."

"I love you," he echoed. "And I will."

He stepped into the waiting boat without being directed.

"You're not meant to be able to see that without Kingsley or me revealing it," she pointed out.

He shrugged as he seated himself. "I happen to have had the opportunity to seek out magically hidden boats recently."

Of course he had.

"Are we ready?" asked Kingsley.

She wondered how much he had seen and heard. She decided that she didn't care.

* * *

Remus held her hand as they crossed the North Sea. It was a violation of protocol, but Kingsley didn't seem inclined to report her to Scrimgeour.

Besides, Scrimgeour hadn't minded that she'd killed a man the last time she'd been out in the North Sea in a small boat with Kingsley. Why should he mind this?

"We need to bind your hands again, Remus," said Kingsley when the shadow of Azkaban reached across the water toward the boat. "The dementors were blind. The hit wizards aren't."

Remus gave Tonks' hand one final squeeze before he placed his hands behind his back and submitted to Kingsley's spell.

They climbed the uneven stairs in silence. A team of hit wizards met them on the third floor and directed them to Remus' cell. There was a thin mattress on the floor, a bucket in the corner, and a pitcher of water next to the mattress.

"Auror Tonks, please make the boat ready to leave. I will finalize the prisoner's transfer," said Kingsley. They were no longer alone and he was asserting his position as the senior Auror on the team. Nothing would look suspicious. No one would have reason to believe that Nymphadora Tonks, youngest Auror in the Department, had begged a prisoner to run away with her not an hour before.

But every step she took away from Remus was painful.

She would rather lie on the stone floor of Azkaban with him than in the most lavishly appointed bedroom without him. She knew that now. She could admit that now.

As she reached the winding staircase her eyes fell on a prisoner she recognized at once.

By Ministry design, she had never caught a glimpse of Bellatrix Lestrange during her previous visits to Azkaban. Although they had never met, their blood relationship was too close to allow for professional interactions. For appearance's sake, Tonks was not meant to approach her Aunt Bellatrix. She should not have been permitted to escort a prisoner who would be housed on the same floor as Bellatrix; the sudden hyper-focus on an outrageous fear-driven law had allowed this nearness to slip through.

She saw the distorted mirror image of her mother in person for the first time. With it came the shame she'd felt since she'd learned what it meant to be a Death Eater; the fear she'd rarely admitted to feeling; and the anger, all over again.

It took Bellatrix a moment to realize that she was being observed. Once their eyes met, Bellatrix knew Tonks as surely as Tonks knew Bellatrix.

"So you are the abomination." Bellatrix's voice was hoarse from lack of use, just as Sirius' voice had been at his trial. "You are the child Andromeda spawned with that filth. You should not be out there while I am in here."

With remarkable swiftness, Bellatrix lunged at the bars of her cell. Tonks was prepared; she froze Bellatrix in place without uttering a word. She took a final, long look at her aunt before she spoke.

"There are people outside who belong inside and I've dedicated my life to trying to put them here. There are people inside who belong outside and that breaks my heart. But you and I, Aunt, are both exactly where we belong."

* * *

Tonks and Kinglsey had left the fortress and returned to their boat when the spell broke and

Bellatrix's outraged howl echoed across the water. It sounded far more animalic than any sound she had ever heard Remus make, and yet Remus was the one who was legally classified as a beast.

_I will come for you, little one. I will drown you like the rat you are._

* * *

The rest of Tonks' shift lasted far too long. How could she concentrate on reports and research and witness interviews when she had just abandoned the man she loved on a cold rock in the middle of the sea?

Cold.

It had been so cold, even without the dementors.

How had Sirius lasted for twelve whole years?

She felt a desperate, frantic need to see her cousin, and she Apparated to his house the minute her shift ended. She didn't consider going home to change or stopping for a snack, let alone a meal. All she wanted was a reassurance from someone who had lived through much worse that Remus would survive.

It was Harry, not Sirius, who opened the door with a sullen look on his face. Tonks could appreciate sullen. Oh yes, she could.

"Hullo, Tonks. Did they make you throw him in the cell personally?"

"There was no throwing involved. He walked in as gently as you please."

"That's how he left the school this morning as well. Those Aurors who were with him were disgusting."

"Yes, they are," Tonks agreed. "Gawain Robards is the one who disciplined me for killing Igor Karkaroff. Maria Gordon's a bit better, but only a bit." She didn't entirely like the smile that she felt creeping across her face. It was too hard; it was too vengeful. It was too Granddaughter of the Blacks. "I heard that they were covered with scrambled eggs by the time the students got done with them."

"If we'd had more time, we would have done better." Harry's scowl deepened. "We only knew what was happening about thirty seconds before they came in. We walked out of classes for the day in protest- at least, most of us did- but we're going back tomorrow."

"Too right you are." Sirius' voice finally drifted in from the next room, and Tonks followed Harry back to the small dining room where Sirius sat slouched with his chair kicked back onto two legs. It was utterly unsurprising that an open bottle of firewhiskey sat in the middle of the table. Tonks poured a glass for herself and downed it in one gulp. Sirius nodded in approval.

"You'd have taken something like this lying down when you were a student?" asked Harry.

"Of course not. But you didn't take it lying down. You've made your point, but you're no longer in a position to punish the people who are responsible for this."

"That's what Cedric said." Harry took a sip of his own drink and made a face; he clearly wasn't used to drinking anything stronger than butterbeer, not yet. As she considered what he'd been through in his short life, Tonks found herself admiring him anew. There was something special about this boy. Something beyond the way Avada Kedavra had bounced right off his forehead. "Cedric says that staying out of class will just make Dumbledore look weak and make the Ministry more likely to give the Defense position to Umbridge instead of Snape. Mind you, I'm not sure one is worse than the other."

"Snape is an arsehole who knows what he's doing and will teach you while he's demonstrating his double standards. Umbridge is an arsehole who doesn't know what she's doing and won't teach you anything while she's demonstrating her bigotry. That's the difference," Tonks put in quickly.

"Exactly what I told him," nodded Sirius. "Harry needs to focus on his OWLs and keeping Umbridge away from his vulnerable classmates, not on leading a revolution."

"He wants me to do nothing, is what he means," said Harry to Tonks. "I don't like not doing things."

"None of us like not doing things," Sirius returned. "I'm certain Remus hated having to cower behind me this morning and letting himself get walked through the Great Hall like an animal. He did it because he believes that that's how he can help us the most right now. You, on the other hand, will have much too much to do very soon."

"How soon?" asked Harry keenly.

"Give me until the weekend to explain." Sirius took another drink.

Tonks reached for the bottle of firewhiskey; it tumbled over as if of its own accord. Sirius lazily set it upright with a flick of his wand before Tonks could even apologize, but in her eagerness to help Tonks tripped over her own bag and fell to the floor.

"All right, Tonks?" asked Harry, extending his hand to help her. "Wait- you've lost your letters." Indeed, dozens of scraps of parchment had scattered across the floor.

"Not mine," she told Harry as he scampered about collecting them. "Remus started getting mail about five minutes after they arrested him. He listened to the Howlers but ignored the rest of it. Said I could have it and it would convince me that I was right to chuck him."

Both Harry and Sirius looked at her in a way that signaled in no uncertain terms that she hadn't been right to chuck him.

"I know that!" she snapped even though neither one of them had said anything. "I love him, I told him I love him, I'll marry him the minute he gets out if he'll have me, all right?"

"All right," said Sirius far too calmly as her own heart pounded in her chest. "Let's read his mail. If it's that bad, he never needs to see it and the rest of us will know exactly where we stand with certain people."

Tonks and Harry nodded in agreement.

* * *

_Dear Professor Lupin,_

_You are the best Defense professor we've ever had and we would have told you sooner if we'd known that you were leaving. The Ministry is out of order for this. Thank you for everything._

_Sincerely,_

_Terry Boot_

_Mandy Brocklehurst_

_Michael Corner_

_Anthony Goldstein_

_Padma Patil_

_Lisa Turpin_

_Isobel MacDougal_

_Stephen Cornfoot_

_Oliver Rivers_

_Sue Li_

* * *

"That's most of the Ravenclaws in my year," said Harry.

"I suppose he should see it after all," said Sirius, and he put the letter aside on top of a chest of drawers.

* * *

_Dear Professor Lupin,_

_This stinks, and this is not fair, and we don't care if you're a werewolf. (Some of us think it's cool.) We don't want any other professor but you. Don't let them grind you down in Azkaban._

_Gryffindor Forever!_

_Seamus Finnigan_

_Dean Thomas_

_Parvati Patil_

_Lavender Brown_

_Colin Creevey_

_Dennis Creevey_

_Ginny Weasley_

_Christianne Steele_

_Heather Hadley_

_Jason Wagner_

_Quincy Fawcett_

_Fred Weasley_

_George Weasley_

_Lee Jordan_

_Alicia Spinnet_

_Angelina Johnson_

_Namrata Vemulakonda_

_Margarita Jewell_

_John Buckley_

* * *

"That must have been just who was in the Common Room when they passed it around," said Harry. "I didn't sign it, nor Ron, nor Hermione, nor, I'm sure Katie would have, and Neville, and-"

"Send it to the _Daily Prophet_ when you get everyone's names," suggested Tonks.

"As if the _Prophet_ would print it," said Sirius with a sneer.

"Luna Lovegood's father has a newspaper. Perhaps they'd print it," Harry mused.

"Lovegood? As in, _The Quibbler_ ? That might do more harm than good."

"At least it would be out there somewhere. At least people would know."

* * *

_Dear Professor Lupin,_

_I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry. When I first found out that you were a werewolf, I didn't want to take lessons from you anymore and I even wanted to tell Undersecretary Umbridge. Cedric talked me out of doing it (and Susan really told me off, if you want to know the truth), and I'm so glad. I'm sorry this happened. I wish it had never come to this and I wish they had never passed that law. You were one of the best teachers we ever had and you were always so patient with me, especially when I had trouble learning to resist the Imperius Curse. I miss you already and you did not deserve what happened to you this morning._

_-Hannah Abbott_

_P.S. Ernie is sorry too. He's writing his own letter but he's choosing his words very carefully and I don't know whether it will get to you in time, so I thought I'd better add this._

* * *

"Hannah and Ernie changed their minds," said Harry, twisting the square of parchment about until Sirius took it from him and placed it on the pile with the others. "I know Lupin said- last year- that he didn't think it was possible for him to teach long enough to change peoples' minds about werewolves, but-"

"Those won't be the only minds he changed, you're quite right."

"I knew Hannah and Ernie would come through," said Tonks, even though she hadn't even known that there had been an issue with Hannah and Ernie.

"I'd like to have seen Susan tell Hannah off, all the same," said Harry.

* * *

_Dear Professor Lupin,_

_I don't know whether this will ever reach you, but I wanted to thank you for everything you taught me. I didn't think I would ever love dueling, or even want to study Defense at the NEWT level, but I do because of you. I hate that it ended this way._

_Sincerely,_

_Stephanie Wheeler_

* * *

"I don't even know who she is," said Harry.

"She's the Slytherin girl who won the dueling championship for the sixth years the night you won for the fifth years," Sirius informed him.

"A Slytherin?"

"They aren't all horrible bigots," said Tonks. She remembered her aunt's face snarling at her from behind the bars of Azkaban. "Loads of them are, of course."

* * *

_You are disgusting and foul and a lifetime in Azkaban won't be enough to make up for all of my friends who you probably raped._

* * *

"Amazing how no one had the courage to sign this one," said Tonks.

"I don't think we need to save that one for Moony." Sirius tossed the parchment into the fire.

* * *

_No wonder you're so ugly. Mystery solved. I knew Dumbledore was off his nut, but I never thought he would go this far. I'm glad someone finally got rid of you. Also you always smelled bad. I feel sorry for the other prisoners in Azkaban._

* * *

"Let me," said Tonks, and she transfigured the missive into a paper crane that flew itself into the fire.

* * *

_Dear Professor Lupin,_

_Margarita wrote me this morning and told me what happened, and I wanted to write to you straight away. I wasn't ready to go to boarding school when I was eleven. I missed my family too much. I was scared and lonely all the time. My memories of Hogwarts are a blur except for your class. You were always so wise and kind and patient. You are the kind of teacher every student deserves. I don't regret leaving Hogwarts, but I do regret not being able to have more lessons with you. I hate that Margarita and Namrata and all the others won't be able to learn from you anymore. I hope that you aren't scared and lonely, and I hope that if you are, someone is as kind to you as you were to me._

_-Simona MacAlastair_

* * *

"Well," said Tonks around the lump in her throat. She remembered Remus mentioning the little MacAlastair girl, and she thought that this letter with its one signature might mean more to him than the Gryffindor Common Room letter with its twenty signatures.

They had just finished sorting through the letters- most supportive, a few disgusting- when an owl rapped its beak against the window with yet another roll of parchment strapped to its leg. Harry, who was nearest the window, relieved the owl of its burden. The owl, though, perched next to Tonks in anticipation of a response.

"My friend Tulip's owl," she explained to Harry and Sirius. Harry handed the letter to her.

_Tonks-_

_Well, I knew he was hiding something but I wouldn't have guessed this! How are you? Do you want to talk now that everyone knows what happened? We could meet at Marquelle at 8? Let me know._

_-Tulip_

She didn't want to say goodbye to Sirius and Harry, but she needed to disabuse Tulip of the notion that anyone understood what had happened. She grabbed a quill from her bag and scribbled a response.

_Yes, see you then. Invite Penny please._

Penny would have figured out by now why Tonks had wanted Wolfsbane potion last summer, and Tonks might as well get all of the awkward conversations with her closest friends out of the way at the same time.

* * *

As always, Marquelle was loud and hot and crowded.

A rude comparison entered Tonks' head: Azkaban was cold and isolated and usually quiet. When it wasn't quiet, it certainly didn't pulse with the music of the Weird Sisters.

_Move your body like a hairy troll_

_Learning to rock and roll_

_Spin around like a crazy elf_

_Dancin' by himself_

_Boogie down like a unicorn_

_No stoppin' till the break of dawn_

_Put your hands up in the air_

_Like an ogre, who just don't care…_

She liked this song, normally. It was loud and carefree and funny and encouraged everyone to dance.

She could see Tulip in the far corner of the room. Tulip had staked out one of the best tables; she'd likely tricked some unlucky soul out of it.

It hurt, somehow, to weave her way through happy, gyrating, half-naked bodies to reach her friends. Everyone else was part of one world; she was from another world entirely.

_Ooh, come on_

_Mmm, you gotta move it_

_Like a groovy creature_

_Creature of the night_

_In a flight_

_Ah, a creature of the night_

_Well, do ya feel alright?_

_Do ya feel alright?_

She didn't feel all right. And she resented the implication that creatures of the night were somehow carefree. More, she resented the entire concept of creatures. Who decided that another sentient being was a creature, let alone a creature of the night?

She reached the table just as Penny set down a tray of food and drinks. Tonks hadn't eaten all day and she started to thank Penny, but her thanks turned into a sob as Penny wrapped her into a hug.

She didn't know how long she cried on Penny's shoulder, but by the time she had pulled herself together and been safely ensconced between Penny and Tulip, the music had changed to a Muggle song. At Marquelle, magical songs and Muggle songs always played in turn unless there was a live performance. That was one of the reasons both Penny and Tonks liked it so much.

_And I miss you_

_Like the deserts miss the rain_

_And I miss you_

_Like the deserts miss the rain_

"I miss him," she said.

"Didn't you dump him?" asked Tulip, who wasn't always tactful. It wasn't her fault, not entirely. Her overprotective parents had made it very difficult for her to learn to make friends, and it had taken her several years at Hogwarts to get the hang of it.

"Tulip!" scolded Penny. "It does make sense, though. You told us that you weren't compatible. Of course you wouldn't want to… wouldn't want to be with a werewolf." Penny shivered. "But he's why you had me brew Wolfsbane Potion for you last summer, isn't he?"

"Yes," said Tonks. Good. That was over with.

"Did he threaten you?"

The idea was so ludicrous that Tonks burst out laughing instead of being offended. She wouldn't have been offended anyway. Asking Penny to imagine being in love with a werewolf was like asking Tulip to be tactful.

"I think that's a no," said Tulip to Penny. "And for someone who by all accounts actually is an expert in Defense Against the Dark Arts, he never seemed very threatening. Unless he was going to threaten to go home before the party really got started because he had a class to teach in the morning."

"I did dump him. Not because he was a werewolf. I knew about that all along. He told me the first time we kissed."

"That kiss that you said was the best kiss you ever had?" asked Penny in disbelief.

"That's really very brave of him," said Tulip. "Considering how you might have reacted to finding out what he is."

Tonks nodded. It had been very brave of him. It was also very brave of him to walk straight into Azkaban. Brave and misguided.

_Could you be dead?_

_You always were two steps ahead, of everyone_

_We'd walk behind while you would run_

Wasn't that the truth.

_I look up at your house_

_And I can almost hear you shout down to me_

_Where I always used to be_

_And I miss you…_

She was going to make him dance with her to this song if they ever saw each other again.

"I never should have let him go," she told them. "I never cared about the werewolf thing and the other thing… the other thing… I over-reacted. He proved I was wrong. I just love him. I love him."

Whatever plans Tonks might have had to explain to her friends that Remus was wonderful and that not all werewolves were like the one who had killed Penny's friend Scarlett fell by the wayside. All Tulip and Penny could do for the rest of the night was hug Tonks while she cried.

**_To be continued._ **

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer : Do the Hippogriff by the Weird Sisters was produced by Mike Hedges for the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Missing by Everything but the Girl was written by Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt. Its peak UK chart score was number three in November 1995; it spent over seven months on the UK Singles Chart.


	72. Harry and Neville

Harry slouched half-willingly back to Hogwarts and flung himself into a chair after removing a pile of Hermione's books. Hermione had willingly refused to attend classes in protestation of the treatment of Professor Lupin, but that didn't mean she was about to take the day off from studying entirely.

"You might've told me you were planning to sneak off to Sirius' all afternoon," said Ron from the other side of Hermione. "I'd've joined you."

"You're a prefect. You need to set an example," said Harry and Hermione in unison. Hermione meant it seriously; Harry meant it sarcastically. Both Ron and Hermione glared at Harry, then laughed.

"I suppose it is an unusual day," Hermione conceded.

"How's Sirius?" asked Ron.

Harry told them everything that he had learned from Sirius and Tonks. He meant to tell them what Sirius had said about how soon Harry would be able to do something more to help defeat Voldemort permanently; he was eager to hear their opinions on what that might mean. But their conversation quickly changed when he told them about the letters Lupin had received. Hermione's eyes lit up.

"We do need to get more organized if we're serious about pressuring the Ministry to bring Professor Lupin back," she said, and Harry recognized the expression on her face. It was the one she always wore when she talked about house-elves. "We need to make certain that everyone who wants to sign can sign. We need a copy for our own records, one for the Ministry, one for the Headmaster- not that Dumbledore wanted to let Lupin go- and one for the _Daily Prophet_ ."

"And one for the _Quibbler_ ," said Harry firmly. "The _Daily Prophet_ likes Umbridge. It quoted her talking about how great Karkaroff was and how Tonks had to be brought to justice for killing him in self-defense. And then it made Ron's mum think my birthday party was a drunken orgy and that I shouldn't be around Sirius."

Ron, who had been drinking a cup of tea, nearly choked. "Mum just wants to protect you. She doesn't think anyone can do that as well as she can. She's like that with all of us."

A pleasant warmth spread through Harry to the tips of his fingers and toes, and he didn't think it had anything to do with his own cup of tea.

"Anyway," said Harry, because he didn't want to talk about how much he had always wished to be part of all of us and have someone like a mother "We should try the _Quibbler_ , too, just in case the _Daily Prophet_ doesn't want to print it. The _Quibbler_ probably will. Luna likes Lupin. She thinks he's very nice and it isn't anyone's business but his if he's a werewolf."

"Luna also thinks the world is flat and there's a government coverup to keep us from finding the edge," said Hermione harshly. "I don't know if it will be good for Professor Lupin to have someone like that on his side."

"Aw, Hermione, Luna's a laugh," said Ron. "But I'd better be the one to talk to her. You can worry about who and when and how much for the rest of it."

"Oh, really?" Hermione raised an eyebrow, but Harry could tell that she was about to take charge and he didn't mind at all. They worked late into the evening drafting letters and petitions and charming parchment so it could not be destroyed.

* * *

The next day marked not only a return to classes but the fifth year Gryffindors' first lesson with Snape as their Defense professor.

The room that had belonged to Lupin for so long felt odd without him. Snape had imposed his personality upon the room already; it was gloomier than usual, as curtains had been drawn over the windows, and was lit by candlelight. New pictures adorned the walls, many of them showing people who appeared to be in pain, sporting grisly injuries or strangely contorted body parts. Nobody spoke as they settled down, looking around at the shadowy, gruesome pictures.

"I wish to speak to you," said Snape, closing the door and moving to face the class from behind his desk. "I want your fullest attention. You have had three teachers in this subject so far, I believe. Naturally, these teachers will all have had their own methods and priorities. I will be surprised if any of you manage to scrape an OWL in this class, let alone successfully handle NEWT work, which is much more advanced."

Most of the students were glaring at Snape now, unappreciative of the implied insult to Lupin.

"The Dark Arts," Snape continued, "are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible."

Harry stared at Snape. It was surely one thing to respect the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of them, as Snape was doing, with a loving caress in his voice?

"Your defenses," said Snape, a little louder, "must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you seek to undo. In this class, I will seek to evaluate how helplessly behind Professor Lupin and his predecessors have left you lest you find yourself suffering the same fates as the unhappy witches and wizards in these pictures." He gestured at the horrifying images on the walls.

The students looked at one another. They were well used to Snape's teaching methods, but most of them appeared to be a bit unnerved by the prospect of Snape teaching a class in which the professor was sometimes required to hex the students. Harry shuddered at the prospect of learning to cast a Patronus or resist the Imperius Curse surrounded by Snape's sneering anger instead of Lupin's gentle humor.

"Thomas!" Snape began. "What is the incantation for the snake-vanishing spell?"

 _Vipera Evanesca,_ Harry thought as hard as he could in Dean's direction. Beside him, he could sense Hermione doing the same. Dean wasn't bad at Defense, really, but he hadn't committed the more specific spells to memory the way some of the other students had.

"I will take your silence as confirmation that Lupin was unable to drum a simple vanishing spell into your thick skull," said Snape. "Miss Brown! In what scenario would you use the impediment jinx?"

 _To slow a rushing opponent,_ Harry thought, and Lavender ought to have known it even if she did sometimes spend half of Defense class giggling about her star chart from Divination.

"To disarm an opponent?" Lavender stammered, and Harry tried not to groan as Snape shook his head in disgust.

"Finnigan! What does the reductor curse do?"

"It blasts objects into pieces, Sir," said Seamus immediately.

It was a perfect answer, but no one expected Snape to praise Seamus. "As destructive as you have shown yourself to be these past four years, Finnigan, I don't imagine you needed Lupin to teach you that." Snape raised his wand and summoned a battered-looking suit of armor to the center of the room. "Miss Patil, cast a protective enchantment upon this. If I cannot break your spell, we will consider this exercise a success."

Parvati rose to her feet, clutching her wand. She cast the enchantment properly; Harry could see that perfectly well. But Snape didn't soften his attempt to break the enchantment the way Lupin might have. Instead, he summoned all of his power and the air fairly rippled with magic as the armor exploded into a thousand pieces.

"Insufficient, Miss Patil," said Snape. "Be glad that that was merely a suit of armor and not your sister's bedroom."

Parvati looked as if she might be sick on the spot. Snape ignored her. "Longbottom, what is the incantation for the tongue-tying curse?"

The correct answer was _Mimblewimble_ ; Harry was certain that they all knew that. But Neville was always terribly nervous around Snape, and he had been looking worriedly at Parvati when Snape called his name.

"Not even a guess?" asked Snape silkily. "Perhaps someone has cast _Mimblewimble_ upon you. Stand up, Longbottom." For the first time, the black eyes fell upon Harry. "You as well, Potter."

Harry's stomach turned as he rose from his seat. He loved practical Defense lessons most of the time, but he was nervous as he began to realize what Snape was getting at. Snape knew all of the students well, and Lupin had made detailed notes on each of their progress. Snape wasn't trying to assess what they knew; he was trying assess how they reacted in an unpleasant environment. It was why he hadn't called on Harry or Hermione. He'd known that Hermione had, as usual, swallowed all of the relevant textbooks and that Defense came naturally to Harry in a way nothing else but Quidditch did.

It wasn't a terrible idea. A Death Eater wasn't likely to be as pleasant and forgiving as Professor Lupin.

Harry still didn't want to be a part of whatever Snape had in mind for Neville.

"You have been practicing nonverbal spells, I believe?" Snape asked.

"I have," said Harry. "But that's NEWT-level, and not everyone-"

"Yes, yes," said Snape boredly. "We all know that the famous Harry Potter, prodigy that he is, cannot be expected to study the same material as his less exceptional classmates. What a pity that you were never willing to apply yourself so diligently to your potion-making as you do to your dueling."

"Harry and I are to duel?" asked Neville weakly. He promptly paled at the realization that he had spoken aloud.

"Is that so far beyond your abilities, Longbottom? Professor Lupin's notes tell me that Potter always duels at least two opponents at a time, but I feel that this has done Potter a disservice. One must use entirely different tactics against multiple opponents, and it is easy to forget how to handle a single opponent if one never practices."

Lupin had once said the same thing to Harry. But Lupin had said it in private, and he had only meant that Harry and Cedric ought to have a friendly match when time permitted. Lupin certainly hadn't used it as an opportunity to humiliate Neville.

Harry decided then and there that he was simply going to fail to cast a proper spell. Nonverbal spells _were_ difficult, and he _did_ struggle sometimes.

Something of Harry's plan must have shown on his face, because Snape took one long stride toward him. "Mr. Potter. If you do not succeed in incapacitating Longbottom, both you and Longbottom will receive detention. If Longbottom does not make a credible attempt to cast a shield charm- and yes, Longbottom, you may cast verbally- the result will be the same."

Behind Snape's back, Neville caught Harry's eye and gave him a resigned nod. Harry knew that all he could do now was make it quick. _Expelliarmus_ , then; that had always been the spell with which he had had the best control and it certainly incapacitated an opponent.

"One final instruction, Mr. Potter," Snape added. "Professor Lupin's notes say that you oughtn't be permitted to rely upon the disarming spell. Use any spell but that one, or it will be detention for the whole class."

Harry wouldn't have thought it possible to be angry at Lupin while Lupin was locked in Azkaban. Harry would have been wrong.

"On my count," said Snape, and Harry and Neville raised their wands and lined up to face one another.

 _Stupefy_ , Harry decided. If not disarming, then stunning was the next step. Snape wouldn't be able to argue that Harry hadn't done anything, and Neville wouldn't be hurt.

"One, two, three!"

" _Protego_ !" called Neville, and Harry was pleased to see that his shield charm looked strong. Perhaps it was even strong enough that Harry wouldn't even be able to knock Neville out.

Stupefy, Harry thought with a rush of renewed anger that Snape had put them both in this position, that Lupin was in Azkaban, that Umbridge continued to exist, and that Sirius hadn't told him about the next step in defeating Voldemort. The spell felt wrong as it coursed through his body and his wand. He wished that he could have opened his mouth to cast it as he had intended.

Then there was a smoky crackle as Neville's shield disintegrated and a thud as Neville hit the floor.

Parvati and Lavender both gasped, and Harry noticed that even Ron was shaking his head.

"What was I supposed to do?" Harry hissed at Ron. Neville was temporarily blocked from view as Snape leaned over him, checking for damage before casting a spell to revive him.

"I know you didn't do it on purpose, mate," said Ron, who looked a little green. "These things happen."

"What things?" Harry demanded.

Snape stepped aside just then and Ron no longer needed to answer.

Neville sat on the floor holding two pieces of his broken wand.

"Potter!" snarled Snape. "If you cannot control your emotions and redouble your efforts to make your wand movements more precise, you have no business casting nonverbal spells."

"I'm sorry, Neville," Harry managed, but he knew it wasn't enough. He had heard Sirius complain more than once that he still missed the wand he'd had as a child.

"S'okay." Neville climbed shakily to his feet and returned to his desk, one half of his wand in each hand. The dragon heartstring core had shredded and spilled messily out of the wood.

* * *

Harry spent the rest of the class in a horrified haze. He had no idea what Snape assigned for homework. (Not that it mattered; Hermione would certainly tell Harry later.) He was barely able to fit his books into his bag.

This was as bad as the time he had hit Cedric full in the face with the Conjunctivitis Curse.

No, it was worse. Cedric had agreed to let Harry cast spells on him and Lupin had been ready with an antidote. Neville hadn't had a choice because he and Harry were Snape's favorite students to humiliate.

Harry gestured for Ron and Hermione to go on ahead. He needed to talk to Neville alone.

"It's all right," Neville repeated when Harry apologized a second time. His eyes were distant and his voice hollow. "You did the only thing you could do. Snape told you to do it. I told you to do it."

"But I never meant to break your wand!" said Harry. Not that what he had meant to do mattered at all. Ron had had a terrible time trying to cast spells properly in their second year when his wand had been broken, and Neville's wand was worse off- it had snapped clean in two. "You need a new one now. I'll go to Ollivander's with you and pay for it if you like. They have to let us out of school for long enough to get you a new wand, don't they? You can't carry on with just the pieces."

"I can't be much worse with just the pieces than I was before," Neville replied darkly.

"I'd hate to lose my wand." Harry remembered, as if it had been yesterday, the wonderful moment when he had first held his holly and phoenix feather wand."The day my wand chose me in Ollivander's was one of the best days of my life."

Neville exhaled audibly. "I've never been there."

Harry was surprised. He'd thought that everyone at Hogwarts got their wands from Ollivander's. "Then how-"

"It was my dad's wand."

Harry couldn't have felt worse. He'd offered to pay for a replacement for an heirloom that was irreplaceable. He imagined what it would have been like to have had a small piece of one of his parents in his hand each time he'd cast a spell…

"My gran is going to kill me," Neville continued.

"I'll apologize to her, too," said Harry. "She should kill me, not you. It was my fault."

Neville didn't seem to hear him. He was still toying with the broken pieces of the wand. "My dad was a great wizard," he said after a moment.

"I know," said Harry. "Both of your parents were Aurors, weren't they?" Neville looked up in surprise. "Sirius told me. You know, my godfather."

"I know."

"He told me how much he admired them both, how good they were at their job. He really liked them, I think, and he doesn't always like everyone."

"I talked to him once, when he called you with that mirror last year and you weren't in the dormitory." Harry remembered. "He was all right," Neville continued. "You seem happier since you've been living with him."

"I am happier since I've been living with him." He'd have been even happier if Sirius hadn't asked for a few extra days before telling him what was going on. But Neville didn't need to know that. "I wish I'd had him for my whole life," Harry said instead. "You know, that night that you answered the mirror, he told me-"

"Told you what?" asked Neville warily.

"Told me that if he'd been my guardian before I started Hogwarts, you probably would have been round twice a week to play with me."

"Oh." Neville sounded more than a little relieved. "About my mum and dad, Harry. You-Know-Who. It wasn't You-Know-Who like with your parents."

"It was Bellatrix Lestrange. Sirius' cousin."

"Did Sirius tell you what she did?"

Sirius had told Harry that what had become of Frank and Alice Longbottom was Neville's story to tell. But Harry decided that Neville was close enough to telling it. "Yes," said Harry. "But I've never mentioned it to anyone else."

"Thanks," said Neville. "It's not that I'm ashamed of them."

"Of course you're not. But it's hard to explain and it's not anyone's business."

"Thanks," said Neville again.

Harry wanted to tell Neville that Harry was the one who ought to be saying thank you because Neville wasn't furious at Harry for breaking the wand or blaming Sirius for what Bellatrix had done. But he didn't know how to say any of that, so instead he guided Neville silently toward Professor McGonagall's office.

* * *

Professor McGonagall seemed to have been expecting them.

"I've had message from Professor Snape," she told them crisply. "I've already taken the liberty of speaking to your grandmother, Longbottom. She will meet you at Ollivander's in Diagon Alley tomorrow morning to purchase your new wand."

"Was she angry?" asked Neville just as Harry asked whether he might go, too.

McGonagall looked from one to the other. "Longbottom, your grandmother has seen enough in her life to know that even the best wands can be shattered under the most unlikely circumstances. I'm given to understand that neither one of you was engaging in horseplay when this happened?"

Harry and Neville shook their heads.

"I'd still like to buy Neville's new wand for him," said Harry.

"That isn't necessary," said Neville.

McGonagall glanced between them again, and this time Harry thought she looked rather softer. She removed a tin from her desk and held it out to them. "Have a biscuit. Both of you."

Neither Harry nor Neville knew quite what to make of the rather unexpected offer, and so they accepted the biscuits obediently. The biscuits turned out to be chocolate and delicious.

"Good," said McGonagall. "Longbottom, would you like Potter to accompany you tomorrow? Many wizards find a friend's opinion helpful when choosing a new wand- or being chosen, as I'm certain Mr. Ollivander would say."

"Yes," said Neville after a moment, and Harry couldn't help grinning. He was dreadfully sorry to have broken Neville's father's wand, but he thought that he would like to see Mr. Ollivander's shop again after so many years. He had known so little about the wizarding world when he had first visited.

"Very well. Longbottom, return to my office first thing tomorrow morning. Potter, a word before you go."

Neville left, and McGonagall nudged the tin of biscuits toward Harry. "Have another, Potter."

Harry sat up straighter in his chair and nibbled at the edge of the biscuit, wondering if now that they were alone McGonagall was going to punish him properly for destroying Neville's wand. Instead, McGonagall asked whether Harry had ever met Neville's grandmother.

"Not really," said Harry. "I've seen her a few times. She's… formidable."

McGonagall laughed. "She is, at that."

"I didn't want Neville to have to see her alone if she's angry about the wand, since I'm the one who broke it. I know it was Neville's father's wand. I thought if I apologized she wouldn't be so hard on Neville for not doing the same things with the wand that his dad did…"

Harry trailed off, feeling rather foolish. What did he know of grandmothers? He didn't have any.

McGonagall was looking hard at Harry, but not the way she did when she was angry. (Having passed notes to Ron during her class more than once, Harry was well-acquainted with what McGonagall was like when she was angry.)

"Well, Potter," said McGonagall at last. "I held you back because I wanted to be certain that you were properly prepared for your unexpected trip tomorrow, but it seems that you are better prepared than I could have hoped. And for what it's worth, I do not think Augusta will blame you for the destruction of the wand. I, however, would like to remind you that when you cast nonverbal spells, wand movement and emotional regulation become all the more significant. You wouldn't cast a Patronus Charm without a happy memory, and you certainly shouldn't cast a stunning spell without focusing your thoughts."

And with that, she waved Harry out of her office.

* * *

As Professor McGonagall had predicted, Neville's grandmother did not seem to blame Harry in the slightest for the destruction of her beloved son's wand. Instead, she seemed pleased that Neville had decided to invite a friend to accompany them. It was a short walk from the fireplace they'd used to travel from Hogwarts (a special one-off connection to the Floo Network, apparently) to Mr. Ollivander's shop.

Neville tried half a dozen wands with sometimes comical results and sometimes no results at all. "I'm almost a squib," he told Mr. Ollivander apologetically. "It might be that none of the wands will choose me because of that."

"Do not say such things, Neville," rounded his grandmother rather imperiously.

"I tried half the wands in the store before I found mine," said Harry. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I think Mr. Ollivander enjoys it more the longer it takes."

"I do believe you're correct about that, Harry," Mrs. Longbottom whispered back as Mr. Ollivander snatched yet another wand out of Neville's hand and replaced it with a new one.

It took about fifteen minutes- though Harry appreciated that it seemed longer to Neville- before Mr. Ollivander declared a perfect match.

"Cherry is one of the most unusual woods for a wand," Mr. Ollivander explained. "A cherry wand will have a strange power- a lethal power in the wrong hands, though the unicorn hair will mitigate that. Did you know that student in the Mahoutokoro school in Japan who wields a cherry wand has a special prestige?"

"Maybe I should transfer there," said Neville as Harry tried to place seven galleons on the counter and Mrs. Longbottom ordered him to put them away.

* * *

As they stepped into the winter sunlight, Mrs. Longbottom told Neville that they had time before lunch to visit Neville's parents. "Neville has told you about his parents, hasn't he?" she asked Harry sharply.

"Yes," said Harry as quickly as he could, because he didn't like to think how Mrs. Longbottom would have reacted if she suspected that there was the slightest chance that Neville didn't praise his parents at every opportunity. "Both Aurors, weren't they?"

"And very well respected within the wizarding community," said Mrs. Longbottom with an approving nod. "Highly gifted, the pair of them. They gave their health and their sanity to defeat You-Know-Who." She spoke without interruption about the many accolades Frank and Alice Longbottom had received until they reached the Spell Damage Ward on the fourth floor of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

Neville, meanwhile, looked thoroughly depressed. It wasn't hard for Harry to understand why, and he felt even sorrier for Neville when he came face to face with Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Frank Longbottom didn't rise from his bed. His skin, grey beneath a day's growth of beard, twitched slightly as his mother spoke to him. He showed no sign of recognizing Mrs. Longbottom or Neville, and certainly no interest when Mrs. Longbottom introduced Harry. ("Lily and James Potter's son, you know, born one day after Neville.")

Alice Longbottom was more aware of her surroundings, but only just. She stood up in her nightdress and edged toward Neville. Her face was thin and worn. Her eyes seemed overlarge, and her white hair was wispy and dead-looking. She did not seem to want to speak, or perhaps she was not able to, but she made timid motions toward Neville. Neville automatically held out his hand to accept an empty Droobles Blowing Gum wrapper. "Thanks, Mum," he said quietly as Alice began to hum to herself.

Harry didn't believe he had ever felt sorrier for anyone in his life.

* * *

By the time they sought out a restaurant for lunch, Harry had no desire to eat. Neville, too, was as subdued as Harry had ever seen him. Mrs. Longbottom, by contrast, seemed only to have gained energy from visiting her son and her daughter-in-law. She appeared to be completely unaware of Neville's cowering misery as she asked what he would like to eat. "The slow cooked new forest venison and red wine casserole, Neville?" she asked. "That's what you usually have."

"That's fine," said Neville.

"I'll have that as well, please," said Harry, relieved to find himself spared from attempting to figure out what he ought to order.

"So polite," said Mrs. Longbottom approvingly. "I see that fame hasn't ruined you. Of course, Neville has always spoken so highly of you that I'm not surprised in the slightest."

"I think highly of Neville as well," said Harry. It had never been more true.

"He's not as clever as his parents, of course." The casual comment hit Harry like a physical blow. He suspected that he wasn't as clever as his parents, either, but Sirius and Lupin never came out and told him so. "He won't make an Auror, Neville won't."

"He's best in our year at Herbology, though," said Harry. He wasn't at all sure whether that was true, but Herbology was by far Neville's best subject, so it might have been. "I'm thinking of becoming an Auror, and there's no one but Neville I'd rather have growing the plants that might save my life."

"Well- that's very kind of you, Harry," said Mrs. Longbottom as Neville eyed Harry suspiciously. "Are you really thinking of becoming an Auror?"

"I don't know whether my marks in Potions will be high enough."

"You need to apply yourself, then." Harry had already known as much and didn't find the reprimand particularly helpful. "I understand that Horace Slughorn is teaching Potions this term. Horace is a fine teacher. He adored both Frank and Alice. Dumbledore was quite right to encourage him to return, as odd as some of Dumbledore's other decisions might have been. Bringing in a werewolf to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts- I ask you-"

Harry set down his fork. He hadn't been enjoying the casserole anyway. "Professor Lupin was my favorite teacher," he said as calmly as he could. "And he would never have let the accident with Neville's wand happen."

"He was the best Defense professor we ever had," Neville added. "He's so easy to learn from. Even for me. My marks were so much better after he came in third year."

Mrs. Longbottom looked at her grandson as if she expected to see someone else. "I suppose that's the case," she said after a moment. "You may be right. I may even tell Dumbledore so when I see him next."

"Write him," said Harry, even though he knew he was pushing his luck and Neville might not thank him for it. "Some of the students are writing to the school and the Ministry and the newspaper, and it would help if some of the families would write, too."

"I admire a young man who knows what he's about," said Mrs. Longbottom after a long moment. "I'll consider it. Do you suppose I ought to, Neville?"

"I really do, Gran."

She nodded. "Then I shall."

* * *

That night, after Harry had closed the red curtains around his bed, he pulled out the well-worn photo album Hagrid had once given him. His parents smiled at him from every page.

Forever healthy.

Forever young.

Forever happy.

Their eyes would never grow vacant. Lily's hair would never be stringy or grey. James would never want for the energy to sit up.

He knew he had been right when he'd told Sirius, last spring, that James and Lily Potter had been luckier than Frank and Alice Longbottom.

 _There are fates worse than death_ , Lupin had explained when he'd taught the students about the dementor's kiss back in Harry's third year.

Harry wondered again just what Sirius was putting off telling him.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer : The beginning of Snape's first lesson as Defense professor, and particularly the description of the room, is quoted from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince . Description of Alice Longbottom quoted from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix .


	73. Harry and the Secret

The Longbottoms were still on Harry's mind that weekend when he slipped out of the castle under his invisibility cloak and made his way to Sirius' house. Between the accident with Neville's wand, meeting Neville's parents, continuing to help coordinate the letters in support of Professor Lupin, Quidditch practice, classes, piles of homework in preparation for OWLS, and his friends' prefect duties, Harry never had found time to ask Ron and Hermione exactly what they thought Sirius wasn't telling him.

But that didn't mean he'd forgotten.

He didn't even tell Sirius hello before reminding him of his promise. "You said I'd have much too much to do very soon. You said you'd tell me what that meant this weekend. It's the weekend."

"So it is," said Sirius. But he made no move to explain further, or to sit down, or to do anything else.

"I went with Neville Longbottom to visit his parents the other day," said Harry. "It was horrid."

"I imagine it was. It was good of you to go."

"Well, I was the one who broke Neville's wand. Didn't-" He stopped himself before he asked the question: _Didn't Lupin tell you?_ Of course Lupin hadn't told Sirius. Lupin was in Azkaban, didn't know what had happened at Hogwarts that week, and couldn't tell Sirius anything.

It seemed like no time at all had passed since Lupin's arrest, and as if Lupin would be waiting for Harry when he returned to the castle. It also seemed like Lupin's arrest had happened years before.

"What's this about Neville's wand now?" asked Sirius.

Harry offered a brief explanation. "Your turn," he said when he was done. "You can't refuse to tell me forever."

"No," said Sirius quietly. "I can't." Sirius hooked one arm around Harry's shoulders and tucked Harry against his side.

"It can't be any worse than the rest," Harry mumbled against Sirius' chest.

"Yes," said Sirius. "It can. But you're quite right." He took his free hand and tilted Harry's face up to look at him. "Have you ever thought about your scar?"

"What kind of question is that?" Harry demanded. He unraveled himself from Sirius and sat down on the bottom of the staircase. "Of course I've thought about my scar. It was the only thing I had from my parents until I was eleven. Even though it came from the thing that killed them, I liked the way it looked. Then I came here, and everyone was always trying to stare at it. Not to mention that it hurts every time Voldemort finds a way to get too close to me, even when it was only that diadem Horcrux. How close are we to getting rid of all the bits of his soul, anyway?"

"Very close," said Sirius roughly as he sat beside Harry. "Almost too close."

Harry clenched his fists in frustration. "You're supposed to be the one who tells me the truth and doesn't speak in riddles."

"I'm trying." Sirius, too, seemed frustrated. "I've tried to tell you this before. Remus has tried too, but he was smart enough to get himself locked up when we couldn't put it off anymore."

"So stop trying and just say it."

"You're a Horcrux and you need to submit to Avada Kedavra so we can separate your soul from Voldemort's. If it works correctly, you won't die but the Horcrux will."

A wave of dizziness washed over Harry. It was a shock, and yet it wasn't. "So let's do it now." He jumped to his feet, clinging to the bannister for support. "You've got your wand. Do it."

"We think our best chance is to resurrect Voldemort using your blood and let him do it."

Somehow that was more shocking than the idea that he was carrying around a Horcrux in the first place. "I don't see how anything could go wrong with that plan," he deadpanned.

"Nor do I," Sirius agreed.

"Why do we think this is a good idea?"

"Because it's what happened in Remus' memories. That's how he was able to do the things he did. He died fighting Voldemort. Then you almost immediately- knowing you would have to sacrifice yourself to Voldemort- used a very old magical artifact to call him to you. You called your parents and me as well, of course, but we'd been dead much longer so it didn't affect us the way it affected Remus."

"Show me the memory," demanded Harry. "He must have shown you."

"He can't put that memory in a Pensieve. He and Dumbledore tried it over and over. It doesn't work."

"That's convenient."

"I'm under the impression that death is only rarely convenient."

Harry brushed the tips of his fingers over the scar on his forehead. He remembered the pain he'd felt every time Quirrell had looked at him in his first year.

He thought of how it was better that Lily and James were dead when they could have been bodies without minds like Frank and Alice.

He thought about how a whole generation of wizards like Lily and James and Frank and Alice might be butchered all over again if Voldemort wasn't defeated for good.

"How soon?" he asked.

"When you've had enough time to think about it that you can tell me you're truly ready," said Sirius. "I think we owe you that much."

It wasn't very much at all.

"I'm ready now," Harry decided. He didn't want to think about this. He didn't need to think about this. Thinking about it wouldn't change anything. "When can we resurrect Voldemort?"

"We haven't really discussed it," said Sirius. "None of us wanted to talk about it, and there was always something else that had to happen first. I think Dumbledore would prefer to do it when school is out of session. Can you hold on until Easter?"

Easter. Most of the students didn't bother leaving Hogwarts for Easter. Mrs. Weasley always sent wonderful chocolate eggs to her children and their friends, and they often turned in their homework with a chocolate smear or two when the holiday was over.

When Sirius had said they'd need to wait until school was out of session, Harry had thought that he'd meant June or July. Not Easter, which was two months away.

If Harry asked for a stay of execution until June or July, he would get one. Sirius had made that clear. Harry wanted that time, but not as much as he didn't want it.

"What if I tell you I'm never going to be ready? What if I tell you I won't do it?"

Sirius' voice cracked. "Don't tempt me."

"Would you help me run? Even though you've spent your whole life trying to stop Voldemort? Even though you believe that anyone who can make a sacrifice to defeat him should do it? Even though your brother died trying, and my parents, and however many of your friends? Even though you would do it yourself if you could?"

"It's your decision, Harry. Not mine."

"But you could stop me."

"But I wouldn't."

"I'm not going to run, you know. I'll be ready at Easter."

"I know."

For almost the first time since they had met, Harry didn't have anything more to say to Sirius. He didn't even want to stay in the house with Sirius. It wasn't that he was angry with Sirius; to the contrary, he knew absolutely and completely how very much Sirius loved him. That was printed plainly across Sirius' ludicrously handsome face.

Harry just didn't want to be around anyone at all.

"If I go back to school right now, will you start drinking?" he asked. Remus wasn't there anymore to look in on Sirius when Sirius was upset. That would be Harry's job alone until Harry helped resurrect Lord Voldemort and allowed himself to die, permanently or otherwise.

"No," said Sirius. "Moony's not here and your parents aren't here. It's just you and me, and I'm not going to fail you. Not now."

"Are you going to do that thing where you don't sleep for two days?"

"Possibly. I can't really help that, Harry."

It was the honesty of the answer that gave Harry the confidence to listen to the part of him that was screaming with the need to be alone.

"All right, then. I'm going back to school."

"Use your mirror if you need me."

Harry nodded, and Harry left.

* * *

He started to pull his invisibility cloak over his head, but the cloak felt too hot and heavy. Why should he hide himself now when, very soon, it was possible that no one would ever see him again?

Likewise, he didn't take one of the hidden tunnels back into the castle. How many more days did he have to feel sunshine on his face or snow crunching beneath his feet?

So it wasn't a Hogsmeade weekend. So he wasn't meant to be out of the castle. What was the worst that could happen? Would they ban him from future Hogsmeade weekends after he was dead? Even if he lived, he had already snuck out of the castle so many times that it had almost become boring.

He drew nearer the school. He heard shouts, but he didn't pay them any attention. No doubt students were practicing Quidditch or having snowball fights or sliding about on the edge of the Black Lake. He'd done those things himself back when he'd been younger. He knew, now, that he would never feel young again. He was, and had always been, a marked man.

His scar burned; not the burn he felt when Voldemort drew near, but the burn of a memory. He barely noticed when he passed through the gates to Hogwarts grounds.

_"Off visiting Hogsmeade, Potter? I don't believe I saw a notice that this was a Hogsmeade weekend."_

He was brought back to reality by the smug voice of Draco Malfoy. He ignored him. Like everything else, his and Malfoy's mutual loathing seemed far away and childish.

"I would know if it was a Hogsmeade weekend," Malfoy continued. "What with my being a prefect and all. They tell the prefects the schedule ahead of time and give us locations to patrol. You wouldn't know, because Dumbledore and McGonagall didn't think you were the right sort to be a prefect."

Once upon a time, he would have said something about how if Draco Malfoy was what a prefect was meant to be, he certainly had no ambitions in that direction. Now it hardly seemed worth it. Once he had wrapped his mind around Sirius' news, he needed to spend what time he had left with Ron and Hermione and his other friends.

"I don't think he understands, Draco," said a shriller voice. Pansy Parkinson. Pug-faced Pansy Parkinson. "I don't think he understands that as prefects, it's our responsibility to give him detention."

Harry finally took a good look at them. At another time, he might have been nervous. There were at least two dozen Slytherins crowding around him. He didn't see any professors or any students from other houses. It seemed that the Quidditch team had been practicing-Malfoy, Montague, Warrington, Crabbe, and Goyle were all carrying brooms- and some of their housemates had turned out to watch.

"Detention, Potter," confirmed Malfoy. "I'll let Professor Snape know."

"You do that," said Harry. He started to walk again. He planned to unfurl the Marauder's Map in the safety of his dormitory and find a private space to spend the next few hours, or even the rest of the weekend. He'd leave a note for Ron and Hermione so they wouldn't worry.

"Don't try to get out of this, Potter!" Malfoy called after him, sounding much annoyed that Harry hadn't argued about detention. "Everyone saw. The whole Quidditch team, Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Astoria Greengrass, Stephanie Wheeler…"

Malfoy kept talking, but Harry stopped listening. He turned and looked at the girls. He didn't know the girl standing beside the Greengrass sisters, but she was about his height and looked old enough to be a sixth year. "Are you Stephanie Wheeler?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Why?"

"You don't have any business with her, Potter!" Malfoy snapped.

It was true that Harry couldn't very well explain that he had simply wanted to see the Slytherin who had written a rather personal letter of thanks to Professor Lupin. "I reckon she can decide for herself whether she has business with me, Malfoy," said Harry. "She's the dueling champion for her year, after all, and that's something you wouldn't know anything about."

There was a low rumble of titters and cracking of knuckles as Stephanie Wheeler stepped forward. She had light brown hair and light brown eyes and pale skin. She looked like about a hundred other girls in the school; it was no wonder that Harry hadn't noticed her before. "All right, then," she said. "Why did you want to talk to me?"

"I wanted to see if you would duel with me sometime," lied Harry nonchalantly. "There's no good competition in my year."

"She'll squash you like a bug," said Warrington. It almost sounded like a genuine warning instead of the posturing to which Harry had become accustomed from the Slytherin Quidditch team.

"Then that will be my problem."

Stephanie Wheeler laughed. "Yes, it will. I admit I'd like a go at the famous Harry Potter. I heard you shattered someone's wand the other day."

"It was only Longbottom!" Malfoy objected. "Anyone could shatter his wand."

"But anyone didn't."

"Let's make this interesting." Pansy Parkinson peeked around Malfoy's left side. Her prefect's badge glinted on her chest. "If Potter can beat Stephanie, right here, right now, no detention for him. If she beats him, he gets double detention."

"Deal," said Malfoy.

"Deal," said Stephanie Wheeler.

They all looked at Harry. "Deal," said Harry at last. "But I want a neutral referee. Someone who's not from Slytherin."

"We should move to the courtyard, anyway," said one of the Greengrass sisters. "We're right under Dumbledore's window. We'll find someone along the way."

They found a number of someones. The first Gryffindor they collected with Ginny's roommate Heather Hadley. Ginny didn't exactly speak glowingly of her roommates, but Heather had signed the Gryffindor letter in support of Lupin, so Harry knew she couldn't be all bad. He handed his bag to her. "Give it to Ginny if I die," he instructed. "She can give it to her brother Ron."

"I know you'll win," said Heather as she dutifully slung the bag over her shoulder.

Harry remembered the first time he'd been challenged to a duel by a Slytherin. (Had he been challenged this time? Had he done the challenging? Did this count as a challenge? Did it matter?) Ron had eagerly volunteered to be Harry's second. If he called for Ron now, Ron would come no matter what he was doing; there was no doubt of that. It shouldn't even hurt his reputation as a prefect since both Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson were already involved.

But Harry wasn't ready to call for Ron knowing that they would only see each other so many times, now, before Harry died.

Or didn't die. Sirius seemed to think that Harry would probably live, but that _probably_ wasn't enough. He needed to prepare to die, and if he didn't, that would be so much the better. Hermione would be proud of him. She liked to prepare for all eventualities.

And he would have been preparing right now if the Slytherins hadn't interrupted him. He had wanted to be alone, and now he was the center of too much attention- again.

The Slytherins nominated a willowy Ravenclaw girl who Harry recognized as one of Cho's friends as referee. Harry nodded his approval, and the audience fled to the sides of the courtyard.

* * *

The Ravenclaw girl- Lyssa, one of the others called her- counted down as Harry and his opponent took their places. They bowed to one another. Stephanie Wheeler looked like she could have been any number of girls. She could have faded into the background and lived a life where no one knew her name. Harry had never had that choice.

He concentrated on the sound of his own breathing and the wand in his hand.

They struck each other simultaneously, and he knew right away that she was, indeed, very good. Far better than anyone in his year. Maybe even as good as Cedric.

For the next ten minutes, they cast and countered. They dodged and ducked and threw up shield charms. They cast silly jinxes. They cast serious hexes. Sometimes one of them managed a hit, but it was never enough to end the duel.

He understood anew why Sirius liked his dueling club so much. With every spell he cast, Harry forgot that he was scared and angry. He forgot about Sirius and Lupin and Dumbledore and Voldemort. His blood and his breath and his magic were his own, and they were wonderful.

Just as his legs began to ache and his brow began to sweat, he spotted an opening.

" _Expelliarmus_ !"

Lupin wasn't there to stop him. Snape wasn't there to stop him. Stephanie Wheeler's wand flew into his hand and he raised the two wands above his head in triumph.

The willowy Ravenclaw Lyssa shouted that he had won. He returned the wand; he and Stephanie bowed to one another again.

"I'll beat you next time," she whispered in his ear.

"Any time, any place," he told her. "Except during Quidditch matches."

And, he supposed, it would have to be before he turned himself over to Voldemort to die.

_**To be continued.** _


	74. The Prisoners

Remus didn't spend his first afternoon in prison awash in guilt and shame and the pain of losing Teddy all over again that came with speaking his son's name.

He also didn't spend his first afternoon in prison savoring the memory of Dora's mouth pressed against his as her fingers twined in his hair.

He didn't even spend his first afternoon in prison contemplating all possible escape routes, threats, and defenses.

He spent his first afternoon asleep.

He spent most of his second day asleep, too, and then most of his third.

If there was a tiny silver lining to imprisonment, it was that he could sleep as much as he liked when he felt tired instead of pushing himself to teach a full day of classes lest his students notice the pattern of his absences.

He woke up on the fourth day hungry and bored. He knew that during the years that Azkaban had been guarded by dementors, most prisoners had eventually stopped eating. He wondered how much the small reforms instituted by Sirius had changed that. The grayish porridge that appeared magically in his cell was not, by any stretch of the imagination, remotely appetizing. He had been near starvation more than once in his life, though, and he never gave any consideration to doing anything but eating it. He set the empty bowl and spoon down near the bars at the front of his cell with a clatter.

Everything in Azkaban was stone or metal. The slightest sound carried and echoed and attracted attention.

Azkaban was a dangerous place. He didn't want to attract attention.

He realized what he'd done far too late.

 _"Remus."_ The voice was a high-pitched whine and seemed far too close. He did a stupid spin about his cell; he was, of course, alone. Cautiously, he approached the front of the cell. He could sense the spells on the bars and wasn't fool enough to touch them, but he did look into the corridor as well as he could. He saw no one. There was a cell across from him, he remembered that from when they'd brought him it, but it was set at an angle and he could see nothing of who might be inside.

 _"Here, Remus."_ The soft, shrill voice again. He knew it now; he couldn't deny it. _"Back left corner of your cell."_

He saw the crack in the stones. It was enough to allow for an almost-private conversation with his nearest neighbor.

It was not, thankfully, enough to allow a rat to escape.

He ignored Peter and went back to sleep.

* * *

As his second week of incarceration began, Remus set a routine for himself. He needed to keep his mind and his body strong if he hoped to survive the next full moon, which was a scant three weeks away.

He began by walking laps of his cell. He memorized every bar, every stone, every crack in every wall. There wasn't much to look at once he'd done that, so he imagined walking from one end of the Hogwarts castle to the other. He saw each of the 142 staircases in his mind- the wide ones, the narrow ones, the ones with vanishing steps, the ones that led somewhere different on a Friday. How far had he walked on a normal day at Hogwarts, even when he'd gone only from his office to the Great Hall to his classroom and back again? It hadn't seemed like very much at the time. Now, in the confines of his cell, it seemed that each day of his previous life had been an epic journey.

 _"Don't pace so, Remus,"_ came Peter's voice. _"You'll be out in a few months. You don't need to worry."_

After that, Remus made a point of walking more loudly than was strictly natural.

Peter Pettigrew, speaking to him as if they were fourteen years old and stealing food from the kitchens to sate an odd pre-transformation craving that had struck Remus in the middle of the night?

Peter Pettigrew, acting as if he could comfort Remus? As if he had a right to do such a thing, even if he happened to be capable of it?

Peter Pettigrew had a lot of nerve. But then, he always had. It took a certain amount of nerve to befriend (pretend to befriend) a werewolf. It certainly took a certain amount of nerve to turn your friends (pretended friends) over to Voldemort and then frame someone else by cutting off your own finger. It took a certain amount of nerve to nurse Voldemort back to health and brew the potion he needed to resurrect himself- not that Peter was going to be doing that again.

When he was done walking, Remus switched over to press-ups, even though he had never much enjoyed them. He practiced, too, the stretches he had learned as a child trying to mitigate the lycanthropic damage to his aching, growing, constantly ripping muscles.

His mind needed maintenance, too, if he was going to emerge from prison ready to support Harry. So he tuned out Peter's pathetic overtures of friendship. He tuned out Antonin Dolohov's shouts about wolves and Greyback. He tuned out Bellatrix Lestrange's shrieked threats even when she mentioned Dora by name.

(Those were the three prisoners who seemed to have been invigorated by Remus' presence. The Crouches and the Lestrange brothers and Rookwood and Mulciber were all quiet.)

He didn't let himself hear them. Instead, he practiced his Patronus memories.

He saw Dora, eyes bright and wand drawn. _"Run away with me,"_ she'd said, breathless in the way only a young woman in love could be. _"We'll both go."_

And when he'd refused- told her how very much she was needed where she was- she'd understood his duty and her own, but she'd silenced him with a kiss. Her lips had been soft and damp against his; he could still feel the way her fingers had stroked his hair, filthy though it had grown over the passing days.

 _"I love you,"_ she'd said. _"Hold onto that."_

He tried to cast a Patronus without a wand, and was almost surprised when it didn't work, so powerfully joyful was the memory.

He switched over to his last memory of Teddy. He'd been making smoke circles with his wand for Teddy's amusement. Teddy was still too young to grab for the circles, too young even to follow their movements with his half-focused eyes. But when Remus tinted the smoke so it was turquoise, Teddy's hair suddenly flashed turquoise as well. Chuckling, Remus tinted the smoke pink, then golden, then a deep blue-purple. Teddy kept pace enthusiastically.

Dora entered the nursery, drawn by Remus' laughter.

 _"Enjoy it now,"_ she teased, a smile lighting her beautiful face. _"Metamorphmagi are nothing but trouble. Ask me how I know."_

 _"I'm looking forward to every bit of it,"_ Remus returned easily. _"I hoped he would look like you, and now he can look like all of the yous."_

He'd stolen the idea of entertaining a baby with colored circles of smoke from James, of course. James had often done it for Harry, and now Remus remembered what it had been like to tutor James' beautiful son when they'd both made it to Hogwarts. He remembered Harry's rapt attention as Remus told him stories of his parents and entreated him to finish his chocolate. To Remus' surprise, the tutoring sessions had remained even after Sirius resumed his place in Harry's life; Remus and Harry both enjoyed them. The sessions had been a bit different each year- now incorporating Cedric, now used as preparation for tracking Horcruxes- but they hadn't vanished like Remus had thought they might.

Using the memory of teaching someone else the Patronus Charm to cast one's own Patronus was rather circular. He wondered whether that had been done before, whether it had an effect on the Patronus itself.

He searched for another memory to sink into and settled on Sirius appearing in his room before the full moon. People who knew Sirius only by reputation thought that he was loud and flashy, and there was no question that he could be those things. People who knew Sirius only by reputation never realized that he was capable, too, of absolute quiet devotion. He pictured Sirius trying to make him laugh in the last moments before the moon rose.

_"They didn't serve fish and chips here when we were in school. It was considered too Muggle."_

_"I suppose we've made some progress since that time."_

_"Or they cleaned out the Black Lake and they had to do something with what they found. You have to send word the minute they serve calamari in the Great Hall. I have a score to settle with the Giant Squid."_

Remus laughed aloud, startling himself, and decided that he had done enough practice for the day.

He resumed sharpening his mind by quietly reciting the current Hogwarts students by House and year.

* * *

The third week that passed without seeing or touching or speaking to anyone was more difficult. He tried to keep to his carefully-devised routines but found them useless.

He thought about how much he resented his placement on a corridor full of Death Eaters. Everyone on this floor of Azkaban seemed to have been a Death Eater with the exception of Barty Crouch- and he had harbored a Death Eater for over a decade.

He heard Bellatrix howl about Dora- _my sister brought that unnatural child into the world, but I shall remove her, her blood shall cleanse the family name_ \- and wondered whether Dora was safe.

He wondered, too, whether Dora missed him. Perhaps Dora had taken this time to reconsider what it would mean to have a husband who would put her in more danger than she already faced every day. Perhaps Dora was beginning to realize what it meant to have a truly unemployable husband; after Remus' public arrest, he would never work again.

He wondered whether the students had adjusted to their new teachers, both intelligent men if not always to Remus' liking.

Above all, he wondered how he would survive a transformation with no medical care.

 _"It'll be the full moon next week, Remus,"_ Peter said in the next cell. _"Aren't you nervous?"_

Remus wasn't so desperate that he was about to share his feelings with Peter.

He reminded himself that he'd been alone for much longer than three weeks in his life. Hadn't he gone years without friends and family, not wanting to burden his father, not daring to approach young Harry?

(But even then there had been the occasional smile from a stranger, the occasional shared laugh when a child in a shop delighted in a new toy, the moment of mutual exasperation with a temporary colleague. Now all the small things had gone along with the big things.)

 _Sirius managed this in much worse circumstances,_ Remus reminded himself. There were so many people less lucky than Remus was and he had to remember that.

 _"You should be grateful, Remus,"_ said Peter. _"A transformation in here is going to be bad, but better than out there where someone might try to kill you."_

Reminding oneself to be grateful was one thing. Having someone else tell you to be grateful was another thing altogether, and it was infuriating.

"Sod off, Peter," said Remus.

Peter burst into peals of squeaky laughter. _"Congratulations!"_ he said. _"Twenty-five days! That's a record."_

Remus didn't ask what kind of a record it was. He was too busy inwardly cursing himself for acknowledging Peter's existence. Peter had had a trial, and that was all the acknowledgement the man would ever need again.

" _You know it was a game we used to play at school,"_ Peter continued, as if he and Remus were chatting over tea. _"James and Sirius and I used to take turns saying the most ridiculous things we could think of until one of us made you laugh when you got into one of those quiet moods. I can't see you smiling, so I'll have to use talking as proof that I've won."_

"I should think that bringing about Lily and James' deaths and framing Sirius for it would be enough games won for a lifetime, Peter," he responded against his better judgment.

 _"I never wanted to do that!"_ Peter's objection was shrill and predictable. First-years explaining that they hadn't meant to cheat off one another's homework showed more creativity. " _And it ended in You-Know-Who's downfall, so you should hardly be angry about it after all these years."_

"Are Lily and James not still dead?" Remus inquired politely.

_"Lily and James chose to make themselves a target. James especially. You-Know-Who didn't want to kill a pureblood from an old family. And as for Sirius, he could have broken out of Azkaban any time he wanted to. He decided not to do it for twelve years because he knew that he was guilty."_

Remus remembered that he had been ignoring Peter for a reason. He said nothing and waited for Peter to quiet again.

Unfortunately, Peter chose to fill the silence. _"Sirius didn't trust you, you know. James wanted to trust all of his friends. Sirius above everyone, but you and me, too. Sirius told him not to trust you. You know how Sirius was."_

Remus resisted the temptation to tell Peter to keep Sirius' name out of his mouth.

Remus reminded himself that this was exactly how Peter had sewn discord between them in 1980.

 _"Sirius never liked me,"_ Peter continued. _"He thought I was annoying."_

Sirius wasn't alone in that.

_"You, Remus, I didn't appreciate how strong you were. You were always going to make it through the war. I wasn't like you."_

Remus certainly hoped not.

He resumed ignoring Peter.

* * *

He listened, though, when Bellatrix Lestrange called out to one of the hit wizards who patrolled the corridors.

 _"The moon is nearly full,"_ she said. _"Are you going to give the werewolf a potion to make him safe?"_

The hit wizard's laughter echoed off the hard stone walls. _"Of course not. If we did that, they'd all get themselves arrested on purpose, wouldn't they? That potion is dead expensive. If the Ministry has room in its budget for that, I'd want a raise first!"_

 _"Won't you be frightened?"_ Her voice held a sickly-sweet solicitousness that Remus knew was an act, and a poor one at that. _"Werewolves are notoriously difficult to kill if they get loose."_

The hit wizard laughed again. _"We won't be patrolling that night. It's you lot who need to be scared. That's why they put the wolf in with the Death Eaters in the first place. No one on this floor was ever going to go home anyway."_

* * *

Three days later, the full moon rose.

Some cultures called the February full moon the Snow Moon; others called it the Hunger Moon. Still others named it the Storm Moon, and Remus thought, as he lost his mind, that this last name might be the best.

* * *

Remus awoke the morning after the full moon (was it still morning?) to the tangy scent of his own blood. The walls were smeared with it. The stone floor, too, was spattered with red. His thin mattress was soaked and stained; what small comfort it had offered was much less now that it was stiff and rough and smelling of iron.

His tired brain sought the questions he always asked at times like these, questions he had been spared by Wolfsbane Potion and by Sirius.

_Did I hurt anyone?_

Only himself. His cell had been locked from the outside; it had not been opened for a month, let alone last night. The walls were worse for wear, but they had held fast.

_How bad are my injuries?_

He'd lost enough blood that a blood-replenishing potion would have been a help but was not a necessity.

There were tender bruises on his face. The wolf must have banged its head against the bars in an attempt to escape. He didn't think he felt the telltale signs of a concussion.

A test of his neck revealed a full range of movement. Thankfully. A spinal injury here would have been the end of him. His back, too, was sore but undamaged.

His left arm was broken in at least two places.

His legs and his right arm were littered with claw marks and puncture wounds. He would have yet more scars, but he would heal.

_Do I need professional treatment?_

The broken arm was the worst of it. Skele-grow would have been lovely; the wand of a skilled healer more lovely still. If he had had sheets on his mattress, he might have made a splint. His only choice now would be to rip a strip from what remained of his robes hope to keep his arm as still as possible.

_Can I afford professional treatment?_

Irrelevant.

_How suspicious do I look?_

Irrelevant.

_What do I remember about last night?_

He remembered the fear before the change. He'd wondered whether this would be the last time.

He felt an echo of maddening blood lust. There were humans just outside the cell and he'd been unable to reach them.

He remembered screaming. Screaming and shouting and shattering metal.

He couldn't have been responsible for that, could he have?

He had only one source of information at his disposal, and that source of information was unreliable indeed. But it was is only chance. He crawled to the wall he shared with Peter. "Peter?" he asked.

 _"Moony!"_ Peter sounded relieved and delighted. Remus didn't have the breath to spare to insist that Peter was not permitted to call him that. _"Some of your blood came through the wall! I didn't know whether you'd made it. I asked the hit wizards and they said they didn't care."_

"They'd move my body if I was dead," Remus pointed out.

 _"Not today they wouldn't,"_ said Peter with the eagerness of a man who had gossip to share.

"And why is that?" Remus' head pounded all the harder.

_"Because Bellatrix Lestrange broke out last night."_

_**To be continued.** _


	75. Sirius, Avenging

In the early hours of the morning, before he had entirely shaken off the vestiges of his troubled sleep, Sirius received half a dozen warnings almost simultaneously. The first was from Tonks, and the next from Andromeda. Then came a rather profane missive from Mad-Eye in tandem with a more polite message from Dumbledore. Last was a formal summons from the Auror Office, which Sirius naturally ignored.

He loved Tonks; he liked Mad-Eye. He thought he might like Kingsley, and he took Remus' respect for Scrimgeour under advisement. But he certainly wasn't going to give himself over to the Ministry at a time like this. They would probably hold him for questioning, and he didn't have the time to waste. None of them did.

He grabbed his mirror and shouted Harry's name. He and Harry usually spoke in the evening, when schedules relaxed and allowed the students to go about their sometimes-solitary pursuits. In the morning, no student had time for an interfering godfather. Harry was likely to be in lockstep with his roommates as they got dressed and scrambled down to breakfast moments before their first class. Sirius' own memories of that particular routine were among the happiest of his life.

Harry appeared in the mirror almost immediately. He was fully dressed; his face was clean and flushed; and his hair was as combed as it was ever likely to get. It was bizarre. No teenager had any business being so ready to start the day.

"You're awake," Sirius said stupidly, even though there was no time to waste. Not that time spent discovering Harry was ever truly wasted.

"Quidditch practice this morning," said Harry casually. "Gryffindor's playing Hufflepuff this month and I don't fancy losing to Cedric. He's not a bad winner, but his dad is."

Sirius laughed. "Are you alone?"

"Yeah." Harry nodded. "Seamus and Dean and Ron are all still at practice. Seamus and Dean are on the practice team and Ron… well, he needs more practice to be more confident. But I caught the Snitch and we didn't have time to let it go again, so I left."

Harry's voice was still casual; in fact, it was too casual. His voice wasn't the only thing that felt off. Harry had left Quidditch practice early? James would never have done that. Even before he'd been made captain, James would have stayed until the last possible moment supporting his teammates and relishing any time he was permitted to spend on a broom.

Harry wasn't James; Sirius knew that. But Harry was precisely as mad for Quidditch as his father had been. Sirius needed to look no further than Harry's fifteenth birthday party for the proof: every single guest had brought Harry a Quidditch-related present.

Was this Harry pulling away from the game he adored because, in light of what he would soon be asked to do, a game no longer held meaning? Was it something worse? Harry and Sirius had barely spoken since Sirius had admitted that Harry, like a locket or a ring, carried a Horcrux.

It bore further attention, but this wasn't the day for that.

"Where's Neville?" Sirius pressed, feeling sick at the thought of Frank and Alice's son.

"I don't know. Down at breakfast or having a shower or something. I just came back to the dormitory to pick up my books. What's going on, Sirius?"

There was a clatter in the background and Sirius heard a muffled curse and an _oh sorry to interrupt Harry_ .

Sirius closed his eyes and wished he could become a dog, or at least drink half a bottle of firewhiskey. If there was such a thing as fate, this was it. "Call Neville over. He should hear this, too."

Harry pulled a face and gestured to Neville, who soon settled himself next to Harry. Neville's tie was undone and his hair was wet, and Sirius thought that that seemed a good bit more natural.

"There's no easy way to say this, and I don't know about Neville, but I know that Harry likes things just to be said."

"You missed your chance to do that five minutes ago," Harry pointed out helpfully.

Sirius ignored him. "Bellatrix Lestrange broke out of Azkaban last night."

Harry's and Neville's features melted into matching expressions of horror.

"As the only person either one of you knows who has broken out of Azkaban after spending more than a decade making conversation with the dementors, I want to remind you both that Azkaban escapees can be very dangerous and extremely fixated on their goals. When I broke out, nothing was going to keep me away from Peter Pettigrew. Mrs. Lestrange may have her eye on one of you."

As he said it, though, he knew that it wasn't so. Bellatrix wouldn't bother with Harry or Neville unless the moment happened to arise. She hadn't actively pursued either of them in Remus' memories.

The most important thing to him had been Wormtail because he had wanted to keep Harry safe.

The most important thing to Bellatrix was Voldemort, who had always been the most important thing to Bellatrix.

And if Bellatrix helped Voldemort regain his strength outside of anyone else's control, then everything Sirius and Remus had done might be for nothing.

"How- how did she do it?" asked Neville haltingly.

"She shattered the bars of her cell. They think she worked herself into a rage and performed accidental magic like a child. It wasn't an accident, of course. She made herself lose control. Barty Crouch is not my favorite person, but he told the investigators that she'd been asking the hit wizards about what they were going to do about patrols on the night of the full moon, and the fools told her they wouldn't be there."

"Why not?" asked Harry.

"Because no one wants to be around a transformed werewolf who doesn't have access to Wolfsbane Potion."

"Is Lupin all right?"

One more concern that couldn't be the most important concern right now. "As far as I know, he is. I haven't heard otherwise." He did his best to look Harry in the eye through the distortion of the old mirror. "This isn't Remus' first full moon alone and without a Healer or a potion. It's not ideal, but he's survived it before and he chose to stay on at Hogwarts knowing that this would be his punishment if Umbridge caught him. So I would like you to remember that if Remus can submit to Azkaban under the circumstances, the two of you can definitely refrain from sneaking off to Hogsmeade or wandering around the Forbidden Forest."

"I don't do those things anyway," said Neville.

"Good," said Sirius. "Perhaps you can be a positive influence on Harry, who does do those things. But for now, Harry's job is to stay safe and he needs to take that job very, very seriously."

"I understand," said Harry.

"Do you? I have it on good authority that when I was the mad mass murderer on the run, you wandered off to Hogsmeade without any sort of permission. And I believe it was last year that you and Ginny Weasley decided to run out into the night after a former Death Eater named Igor Karkaroff."

"I won't do anything you wouldn't do."

"You are better than I am and you will do better than I do!" Sirius snapped more harshly than he'd intended. He forced himself to calm down. "You are the most important thing in the world to me, Harry. When I was the one who broke out of Azkaban, nothing would have stopped me getting to you. My cousin Bellatrix and I are very much alike-"

"No. You're nothing alike." It was Neville, not Harry, who had interrupted him and Sirius thought that it was the kindest thing he had ever heard anyone say. He was reminded anew that while he was fighting for Harry, he was also fighting to prevent the loss of another generation. Harry's friends and classmates wouldn't be decimated that way Sirius' had. It was why Harry would sacrifice himself to Voldemort so soon.

There were things worth dying for.

* * *

He told Harry and Neville goodbye and kicked his chair back onto two legs, staring at the ceiling as he thought. He needed to work out what Bellatrix would do next. He hadn't lied to Neville and Harry; he had an advantage because what Bella might do was uncomfortably close to what he himself might do.

Tonks had occasionally mentioned being disturbed by the resemblance between Bella and Anna, but Sirius knew that the resemblance had never been more than superficial. Andromeda had always been more quietly, thoughtfully calculating than her sister- and rather less overtly powerful, too. It was Sirius and Bellatrix, the firstborns of their respective lines, who had been paired and praised for their magical prowess as children. They'd been rash, they'd been arrogant, they'd been brilliant, and they'd been guilty of the most extreme devotion to their causes and their people.

They'd been opposed only in determining which causes, and which people, were worthy of that devotion.

It was no wonder that they had been the two who had spent most of their adult lives in prison while Anna and Cissy lived their lives and Regulus lost his.

Sirius had always had the ability to break out of Azkaban. The dementors could not have detected the exit of a dog any better in 1981 than in 1993. He hadn't been properly motivated until the photograph of Wormtail had lit a fire in his brain.

Tonks must have lit the fire in Bellatrix's brain when she'd escorted Remus to Azkaban.

Peter had abandoned Sirius' family when he'd betrayed the Potters. Tonks was the living embodiment of the way Andromeda had abandoned Bellatrix's family. Bella had stormed and raged and cried _good riddance_ , but Sirius knew that it had hurt.

He knew because it had hurt when Peter had decided that his own life mattered more than the Potters' lives, no matter that Sirius and James would certainly have given their lives for Peter.

Sirius had escaped Azkaban and gone straight to Harry. Bella would want to go straight to Voldemort. In Remus' memories, Voldemort had been in Albania and Peter had found him. Had Peter known Voldemort would be there or had it been a coincidence? Sirius doubted that Voldemort would have shared his emergency plans with his followers because Voldemort wouldn't have admitted to having emergency plans. Nonetheless, could they warn the Albanian Ministry to be on the lookout for Bellatrix?

He sent a message to Dumbledore.

In the blink of an eye, Dumbledore replied that it had already been done, and that furthermore:

_I know the location of the eighth piece and am monitoring it. I will take steps if anyone approaches._

Well. Sirius supposed that Dumbledore hadn't gotten himself into the discussion for Greatest Wizard of All Time by being a moron.

It was a relief to know that Bellatrix wouldn't be able to resurrect Voldemort… today… without a fight… but she still needed stopping before the world became infinitely more complicated.

Where would Bellatrix go first on her quest to find Voldemort? She would seek out a wand and perhaps a broom or some other magical devices. She could go to Narcissa for help- Cissy would give it- but the problem was that Malfoy Manor would be the first place the Ministry would look. Scrimgeour probably had one Auror standing outside Lucius Malfoy's gate and another trailing after Narcissa at a not-so-discreet distance.

Where else might Bellatrix go? Narcissa aside, the family members on whom she might have relied were dead. Her friends, to the extent that she'd had them, were mostly in Azkaban. (It amused Sirius that Bella had apparently made no effort to bring Rodolphus with her when she'd fled the fortress.)

There was one place where Bella could go in search of useful supplies and be assured that the Ministry wouldn't chase her because they wouldn't be able to find her.

12 Grimmauld Place.

The doors opened to anyone born a Black. To anyone not born a Black, the building was Unplottable.

With a flick of his wand, he Apparated to the front step and let himself inside.

* * *

Sirius searched Grimmauld Place from top to bottom. He found no one. In the basement kitchen, though, he discovered a carefully preserved photograph of Bellatrix just inside Kreacher's den.

 _Kreacher_ .

Another "member of the family" who would be more than willing to help Bellatrix.

"Kreacher!" Sirius called, loathing as always the feeling of the bond, a hook somewhere in his chest like a Portkey gone wrong.

Kreacher appeared at his feet. "Yes, Master?" he croaked. It wasn't a friendly croak, exactly, but neither did it radiate with abject loathing the way it would have before he'd destroyed the locket.

Sirius picked up the photograph. It was an old one; Bella had only been about fifteen when she'd sat for it.

(The memory came again. He was nine and screaming with pain. Bella ran to him and rocked him in her arms. _Everything will be all right, we can fix it, whatever it is. And I don't mind saying I'm impressed that you managed to do this much magic with that terrible wand._ )

"Has Miss Bellatrix called you, Kreacher?" Sirius asked.

"No." The elf shook his head adamantly. "Miss Bellatrix cannot call Kreacher from Azkaban, and if she could, Kreacher could not go, there is magic there Kreacher cannot break."

"She is no longer in Azkaban." Kreacher's eyes widened with delight. "If Miss Bellatrix or her sister Miss Narcissa calls you or asks you to do anything, you must come to me immediately and tell me. That is an order, Kreacher. Do you understand?"

Kreacher scowled his familiar scowl. "Kreacher understands."

"For now, I'd like you stay in the house with me." Sirius grimaced. There was barely a being on the planet whose company he didn't prefer to Kreacher's. But he had made mistakes the last time he had confronted Bellatrix, and he had no intention of repeating those mistakes.

Sirius didn't want to stay in the massive basement kitchen beside Kreacher's pathetic tribute to fallen Voldemort sympathizers, so they climbed up the stairs to the ground floor. Sirius didn't want to be on the same floor as his mother's portrait, either, and so he made his way past the heads of Kreacher's relatives to the first floor.

As much as Sirius hated Grimmauld Place, he could admit that the drawing room had once been exquisite. Between the large windows overlooking the street and the massive fireplace, it was the brightest room in the house. Its beauty was, of course, marred by the collection of dark objects in the ornate glass-fronted cabinets; the horrendous tapestry featuring the Black family tree; and the filth that had escaped the hasty cleaning he'd given the place before Harry's party in July. They hadn't used this room for the party and so he had removed only immediate threats.

Sirius banished some cobwebs and a nest of dead puffskeins before eyeing the tapestry. He knew that he couldn't remove the tapestry; he'd tried. His mother's sticking charms had been the stuff of legend.

He stared at the burn mark where his name had once been, his wand warm and solid in his hand. No, he couldn't remove the tapestry, but he could make it less hateful. He could make it less hateful and keep Kreacher on his side at the same time.

"Kreacher, go to the library and fetch me my mother's book of decorative charms."

Kreacher obeyed without comment. Sirius found the spells he sought almost instantly; the book's spine had been cracked by many generations of Blacks using it for just this purpose. _"Filo subtegminis aurum scribentes."_

The gold thread connecting the names brightened immediately. Deeply aware of Kreacher sulking beside him-and even more aware of the image of Bellatrix knocking him through a ragged curtain in the Department of Mysteries- Sirius began by retracing Regulus' name.

_Regulus Arcturus Black._

The words glowed and Kreacher fell prostrate beside Sirius.

The thread above Regulus' name glittered ever more brightly and Sirius traced over his parents' names. _Walburga. Orion._ Hadn't he done this with his finger as a small child, before he'd learned what his family meant and why he didn't belong here? Hadn't his mother indulgently said that the tapestry wasn't to be touched, but perhaps just this once, for it would after all belong to Sirius one day?

To his surprise, a line emerged from the scorch mark to the left of Regulus' name. Sirius hadn't thought that this would be quite so easy. " _Reparo_ ," he whispered instinctively. And his name reappeared before his eyes, bold as ever.

_Sirius Orion Black._

"I win," he told no one in particular, even though he had no use for the prize. Kreacher didn't seem to notice; the elf was sobbing again.

Best not to blast off Bellatrix's name, then. He would blast only the real thing.

He traced the line back to his grandparents and then his cousins, smiling as he reached the place where Andromeda belonged. " _Reparo_ ."

Twenty years before, he had unwillingly, under a thousand threats, watched as his mother marked Bellatrix's marriage to Rodolphus. (Rodo who Bella had left behind when she'd fled the prison that morning…) He didn't know how he remembered the spell, but he did. He held his wand over Andromeda's name. " _Connubium_ ," he said, and carefully spelled out Ted's name.

_Edward Tonks._

And then, with delight, a new name.

She was going to hate this.

It would be fun.

_Nymphadora Vulpecula Tonks._

He was half-inclined to add Remus' name, too, but he supposed he would wait until after the wedding.

He retraced his steps and found the burn mark where Uncle Alphard belonged. " _Reparo_ ." Then, too, the relatives he hadn't known.

 _Marius Black,_ the squib.

 _Phineas Black_ , the supporter of Muggle rights.

 _Iola Black,_ who married a Muggle. Sirius didn't know if she'd ever had children, but he did remember her husband's name (it had featured periodically in his mother's lectures). _Bob Hitchens,_ a new addition to the tree.

 _Cedrella Black,_ who married Septimus Weasley. He thought of adding their children, but he didn't remember the names of Arthur's brothers.

 _Eduardus Limette Black._ Sirius wasn't even sure what he had ever done, so it must have been really bad. Or truly great, depending on where one stood.

All of the names glittered with gold, now, and the tapestry around them looked dingier than ever.

Kreacher seemed to think so, too. "Does Master wish Kreacher to remove the dust?"

"Yes, please, Kreacher," said Sirius, biting back the retort that he hadn't known Kreacher was capable of removing dust. Today, of all days, he had to keep Kreacher on his side.

With a snap of Kreacher's fingers, the fabric was clean and bright.

"I know how to fix the edges where it's fraying," Sirius said. "Will you clean the windows?"

"Yes, Master."

The room instantly flooded with light, but it still took Sirius the better part of an hour to mend the edges of the tapestry. It was difficult, close work and he had no plans to do any such thing ever again. But then, he hadn't had any plans to do it once.

His stomach growled as he stepped back, task complete. He hadn't eaten all day.

"Does Master wish for me to fetch his lunch?" asked Kreacher.

Sirius had never particularly trusted Kreacher to fetch food for him or anyone who was not a Death Eater, but he didn't want to leave the house in case Bellatrix arrived. He also didn't fancy eating anything that might have been in the kitchen for a decade.

"Yes," he decided. His orders to report any contact with Bella and Cissy would be sufficient protection.

Kreacher vanished with a pop.

Sirius averted his eyes from his morning's work and strode into the toilet to wash the dust from his face.

"Your hair is too long, Master Sirius," the mirror informed him.

He took a good look at his hair. He hadn't cut it in months and it had grown past his shoulders. He hadn't worn it so long since Azkaban.

The mirror wasn't entirely wrong. It was too long. But he was inclined to take time out from waiting for his godson's possible demise to cut his hair. He would cut it after Harry faced Voldemort, he decided. He would cut it into a flattering style as a celebration or he would shear it off in mourning.

He splashed water onto his fingers and combed it through his hair.

_WHO ENTERS THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS?_

Walburga's portrait had awakened. Sirius took a dueling grip on his wand and crept to the head of the grand staircase that overlooked the entrance hall.

* * *

It was her.

The portrait was babbling that Bellatrix was beautiful and was always welcome in this home, unlike blood traitors and mudbloods and half-breeds.

Sirius didn't hesitate. By way of greeting, he sent a stunning spell at Bellatrix's chest.

Bellatrix saw him just in time and dodged. The spell bounced harmlessly off the front door and a retaliatory spell crackled against the bottom step.

Of course she already had a wand. She was resourceful. She was more than willing to steal or kill.

Three jets of red light soared up the stairs toward Sirius. Sirius deflected them and they hit the house-elf heads mounted on the wall. Several of the heads disintegrated.

Kreacher wasn't going to like this, Sirius mused as he tried again to stun Bellatrix. Her shield charm flashed brilliantly in response.

"Is this any way to greet your cousin?" she asked.

"You did come to my house, Bellatrix."

"It is not your house." More spells; more shields. "You are a blood traitor."

"I put myself back on the tapestry," said Sirius. He tried to slip a body bind underneath Bellatrix's defenses. It didn't work. "Drop your wand and you can sit in the drawing room and admire it while we wait for the Ministry to come for you."

"The Ministry." Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me you're a slave of the Ministry. Even you, Sirius, cannot believe that the Ministry is a proper steward of the magical world."

"Not really," Sirius admitted. He managed to hit her with a leg-locker jinx, but she was able to break it quickly.

"The Dark Lord will rise. He will rise again and I will be at his right hand. He will be more great, he will be more powerful, he will put the mudbloods in their place-"

Walburga's portrait began to scream in concert with Bellatrix. "There will be no more mudbloods-"

"We will reign as we were meant to reign-"

"They will not enter the house of my fathers-"

"They will bow before us-"

"My Regulus will be avenged-"

"Harry Potter's head will be mounted on a stake as a warning-"

Bellatrix aimed for a gap in Sirius' defenses, and she should have been successful. Her aim wasn't precise, though, and Sirius merely stumbled through the burning pain in his side as he descended the stairs. The dust of the house-elves ground beneath his feet. He held his wand above his head and reached for the curse he'd hoped never to cast.

_"Avada Kedavra."_

It hit Bellatrix in the chest.

She crumpled to the ground beside the troll's leg umbrella stand.

The whole house seemed to flicker with green light.

He'd felt the house flicker like that once before, when he'd been a child and he'd tried to turn his wall into a window. Bella had reached him long moments before his parents had.

Sirius sat on the lowest step and cried.

* * *

He didn't know whether seconds or minutes or hours had passed when Phineas Nigellus' aristocratic voice broke the silence. He had traveled from his portrait in the upstairs bedroom to one of the entryway portraits (all of which, save Walburga, were generally quiet).

"You are aware that I have an obligation, as a former Headmaster of Hogwarts, to report this to Dumbledore."

"Go ahead," said Sirius.

"Not that I agree with everything Dumbledore does, of course. The man is brilliant, but he is almost as insufferable as his students sometimes. Now you, Sirius, were especially insufferable as a teenager…"

The familiarity of the insult was comforting. He raised his head from his hands and wiped the tears from his cheeks. "And I suppose Bellatrix was the exception?" He pointed at her corpse, so much smaller in death than the woman had been in life.

"No, Bellatrix was as bad as the rest. Hot-headed, always certain she was right, making everyone around her as miserable as she was. The two of you were the real doppelgängers in the family, not Bellatrix and Andromeda."

"I know." He had seldom been more aware of anything.

"But you aren't her image any longer. You were calm and collected when you fought her. You did not succumb to her taunting."

Sirius was about to point out that he'd used the killing curse when she'd invoked Harry's name, and he wasn't at all certain that he hadn't been rash, when Kreacher returned carrying a bag of what smelled like chicken sandwiches.

The bag fell to the floor and Kreacher flung himself upon Bellatrix's body. He shook with ugly sobs.

"Return to Hogwarts, Kreacher," said Sirius. The elf looked at him mutinously before crawling to his feet and staring at him.

"Master has been crying for Miss Bellatrix, too."

Sirius didn't have the energy to correct him. "I am ordering you to return to Hogwarts. Your work here today is done. Thank you." It still felt unnatural to thank a house-elf.

Kreacher bowed wetly and vanished. All that remained was the damp imprint of his nose on the floor and the abandoned bag of food beside Bellatrix's corpse.

A throat cleared itself above Sirius' head. Phineas Nigellus was back. "Dumbledore says to stay where you are and that he has alerted the Ministry. He tells you that it was well done, Sirius, and that you may have averted a great tragedy with a smaller one. And for once I agree with him."

Sirius buried his face in his hands once more and waited for the Ministry to arrive.

**_To be continued._ **


	76. Sirius, Disconcerted

**Sirius Black Speaks After the Death of Bellatrix Black Lestrange**

**By Rita Skeeter and Ellen Russell**

**A Daily Prophet Exclusive Interview**

Sirius Black is at once everything you would expect, and nothing you would expect.

Raised in the lap of luxury as a member of the influential and infamous Black family, his star fell as fast as it rose when he was wrongfully imprisoned for a mass murder within days of the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He celebrated his twenty-second birthday in Azkaban and there was no expectation that he would ever be released.

He strides confidently into the _Daily Prophet_ office looking proper fit for a man who spent twelve years of his life in the dementors' thrall. His abundant dark hair, which he has allowed to grow past his shoulders, shows no sign of greying. While he appeared almost frail in his wanted posters, his chest is now broad and muscular. His robes are new and fashion-forward.], yet still classic. Beyond the standard markers of great good looks, Black possesses something extra, something indefinable, that makes him entirely mesmerizing.

Black is accompanied by his cousin Andromeda Black Tonks, who often functions as his de facto press secretary. Black has kept a low profile since his belated trial nearly two years ago. Tonks has often told the _Prophet_ that Black prefers to direct all of his attention to his godson, who is none other than the famously reclusive Boy Who Lived: Harry Potter. Readers may recall that last July, Black threw a fifteenth birthday party for his godson at the very ancestral home which recently became the scene of a grizzly duel.

The presence of Tonks on this occasion is, then, a bit of a surprise to your correspondents, coming as it does in the aftermath of the death of her sister Bellatrix Black Lestrange at Black's hand.

"It's not a conflict for me at all," Tonks says when asked whether her sister's death has put a strain on her close relationship with her cousin. "I have not spoken to Bellatrix Lestrange for more than twenty years. While I mourn the woman that she could have become, and the relationship that we might have had, I understand as well as anyone that she was in Azkaban because she belonged in Azkaban. My daughter is an Auror, and the last time my daughter passed through Azkaban in the line of duty, my sister threatened to kill her. I don't doubt that Bellatrix would have been capable of it. I don't doubt that she would have killed Sirius had he not defended himself. I mourn her, perhaps, but more than that I am relieved that my family and other innocent people are safe."

Perhaps your correspondents ought not have been surprised, after all. Black inherited more than cheekbones that could cut glass from his famous family. Rumor has long had it that the Blacks have been forming internal alliances and killing one another for generations. Was this latest death, then, perhaps a mere matter of destiny?

"No," responds Black quickly when the question is put to him. "This could have been prevented by proper management of Azkaban."

Big words from the man who is said to have argued vehemently behind closed doors in favor of removing the dementors from Azkaban.

"I did want the dementors removed from Azkaban," Black snaps. His grey, penetrating eyes flash beneath his stark, expressive eyebrows. "Torture is not an appropriate or effective deterrent. Torture is not something a civilized society should condone. And dementors are not to be trusted with any sort of responsibility. That said, I certainly did not want the prisoners to be left entirely unguarded because the Ministry made the decision to confine an unmedicated werewolf for no reason."

Did we forget to mention that the recently disgraced Hogwarts professor and werewolf Remus Lupin is a childhood chum of Black's?

Black's full lips contort into an expression of disgust, revealing two rows of perfectly aligned teeth. "I slept in a bed not two feet away from Remus Lupin for seven years at school," Black says. "I think I'm in a position to tell you that he's harmless when he's given the tools to control his condition. I'd like to see the Ministry leave werewolves alone unless they actually commit a crime and devote those resources to properly monitoring the prisoners who truly belong in Azkaban. And while we're on the topic of Remus, I'd like to point out that my godson and a large number of his classmates were appalled when he was removed as their professor."

[See page 11 for a letter written in support of Remus Lupin and signed by 97 current Hogwarts students. We will be publishing a selection of responses to the students' letter in next Sunday's edition of the _Prophet_ .]

Black is reminded that we are not here to discuss werewolf rights. Tonks quickly renters the conversation to remind your correspondents that Black need not discuss anything at all with them.

Black smiles at that: a smile that hints equally of love and danger. "Thank you, Anna," he says, charmingly addressing his cousin by a childhood nickname. Bellatrix Lestrange, we are informed, was known to her family of origin as Bella.

So, were Black and "Bella" close as children?

"Sometimes," Black admits, making an ambivalent gesture with one strong, well-shaped hand. "When we were younger, I did admire her. Our relationship was never the same after I began school and was Sorted, according to her, into the wrong House."

Black was Sorted into Gryffindor and promptly befriended James Potter and Remus Lupin. Tonks and Lestrange, like the rest of the Black family, were Sorted into Slytherin.

"We graduated into a war and we were on opposite sides," Black continues. "I don't doubt that our wands crossed when she was fighting for [He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named] and I was fighting against him."

[We should note that Black did NOT say _He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named_ or _You-Know-Who_ during his interview. When asked to do so, he simply replied "no" and continued to speak the name that is generally not spoken. Tonks occasionally flinched but made no attempt to curb her cousin's recklessness.]

"When she escaped," Black continues, "I suspected that she might come to our ancestral home to collect herself. As the house is unplottable, it would have been impossible for the Ministry to find her there, so I went there myself just in case. I attempted to stun her; I attempted to place her in a body-bind; I attempted repeatedly to subdue her using non-lethal means. I asked her to turn herself in; I offered to make her comfortable and wait with her. She refused. She had a wand and I knew that she was more than willing to kill me. She had invaded my home. So I defended myself. I did not use lethal force against her lightly or as my first choice. But as everyone knows, I have a godson who is far too alone in the world thanks to [He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named] and his followers. I can sacrifice myself for Harry exactly once, and after that he will be entirely on his own. I had to defend myself before Bellatrix decided to seek out Harry, or Auror Tonks, or any other person she happened to view as an affront."

Black shines with love for his godson each time he mentions him. It is clear to these reporters that the Boy Who Lived made a wise decision when he publicly requested a new trial for his godfather two years ago. All the mistakes of Black's youth are made right in the way he conducts himself as an adult.

Bellatrix Lestrange, alas, chose not to follow in her cousin's footsteps.

* * *

Sirius dropped the newspaper to his lap as Harry approached and sat beside him in the shadow of the Whomping Willow. It was an unseasonably warm late winter day, and while other students were enjoying the castle's grounds, none but Harry seemed inclined to approach the violent tree.

"Snape read that article about you in class," said Harry without preamble. "He kept saying it was no wonder I broke Neville's wand since I was probably remembering the last time I gazed into your penetrating eyes."

"Ridiculous. It's my stark, expressive eyebrows that can really distract a person."

Harry didn't laugh. "If Bellatrix had gotten to Voldemort, she would have brought him back. Maybe he would have made 100 more Horcruxes. We wouldn't have been able to do anything about it."

Sirius didn't know whether to be proud or sad that Harry had reached that conclusion. "That's true."

"You should have let me die when you first told me what I am."

"It's not what you are," said Sirius sharply. He was well-practiced at this sort of argument; one had to be, if one had spent his entire adolescence in the company of Remus Lupin. "You're Harry Potter, fifteen-year-old wizard, Quidditch star, and all-around brilliant human being. The Horcrux is just a thing that's attached to you. Like some sort of boil we have to lance."

"We need to lance it now. Before something else happens. Bellatrix can't be the only one. I bet Lucius Malfoy-"

"Lucius Malfoy doesn't have the gumption to do anything without checking which way the wind is blowing."

"Then someone else."

Sirius sighed. "You're right, Harry. You and I will both say that to Dumbledore when we talk to him today."

"Good." Harry started to stand, but Sirius took him by the arm and pulled him back down.

"Are you absolutely positive that you're ready?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any other questions?"

Harry was silent for a long moment, but Sirius knew better than to take that as a "no." Harry had spent most of his life being told not to ask questions and being lied to when he did ask. It sometimes took him a moment to work out what he wanted to say. Sirius was more than willing to wait.

"Were the things you said to the _Daily Prophet_ true?" Harry asked at last.

"Mostly. I simplified a few things, of course. I couldn't very well explain how I knew that Bellatrix would have been happy to kill me and that I had to approach that duel as if my life depended upon it."

Something in Harry sagged almost imperceptibly. "Part of me was always afraid that you'd die because of me the way you did in Lupin's memories."

"Part of me was afraid of that, too," Sirius admitted. "But it wasn't the same situation as all. Bella had only been out of Azkaban for about twelve hours when she attacked me. She wasn't in practice. I was. I've been preparing for this for over a year and I wasn't going to underestimate her the way I might have once. She was magnificently magical and incredibly powerful, but Remus put his thumb on the scale, hard, in my favor."

"What you said about only being able to sacrifice yourself for me once… I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for me at all."

"I agree." Sirius tried to keep his tone light. "I'd prefer to stay around and meet your wife and children and grandchildren."

"What will you do if I'm the one who dies? If I'm the one who sacrifices myself for everyone else?"

"I can't answer that, Harry. I don't know." Harry looked unsatisfied. "Is there an answer you'd like me to give you?"

Harry shrugged. "What spell did you use to kill her?"

" _Avada Kedavra_ ."

"That's an Unforgivable Curse. They aren't going to send you back to Azkaban?"

"No. They didn't look very hard at what killed her. She was a dangerous Azkaban escapee who came into my home uninvited and fought with me. All of that was abundantly clear, and that was all the Ministry really wanted to know."

"Doesn't using that curse rip your soul? Like Voldemort?"

"Well, I certainly didn't make a Horcrux after I'd killed her!" Sirius snapped, even though that wasn't what Harry had been implying. "I don't know whether it damaged my soul, and I don't think I care. If I could have stunned her and disarmed her and trussed her up for the Ministry, I would have. I missed my first few chances and I didn't want to take any more when I knew she wouldn't hesitate to kill me and turn you over to Voldemort. If I suffer because that decision ripped my soul, I'll accept it. The satisfaction of knowing I've done everything I can for you in the face of the completely unfair hand you've been dealt is all I need for the rest of eternity."

"Do you think it hurt her to die?"

Sirius froze at the shy innocence of the question. Remus had told him that, in the memories he hadn't been able to share, Harry had asked whether it hurt to die and Sirius had promised that it was easier than falling asleep.

"You don't have to answer," said Harry quickly.

"I want to answer. I didn't expect the question. I thought perhaps you'd ask me what it felt like to kill, the way you asked Tonks last year."

"That was when I'd almost killed Cedric by accident. That was when I reckoned- I reckoned that maybe you were all preparing me to kill Voldemort, not to be killed by him."

"We think you'll survive," he reminded Harry brusquely, as if that made the plan any less heinous. "And if we're successful, Voldemort will be vanquished forever because of you."

 _Vanquished_ . It was such a nice word. He tried it on in his mind. He hadn't _killed_ Bellatrix, he had _vanquished_ her.

It didn't make a difference. It was cheating with semantics.

"Tonks told you that killing Karkaroff made her feel helpless," Sirius recalled. "But that wasn't how I felt. I was angry at Bella for putting me in that position. I was sad at her wasted potential. It made me sorry for the years I missed and sorry that I wasn't able to speak to Regulus before he died all over again. But it was, as I said, also satisfying." A sudden image of a glowing ball of light rose unbidden in his mind's eye, a ball of light like the one Félicité had used. Félicité had always asked him to break the elements of his worst memories down to their tiniest details. He supposed that now he did it naturally.

He remembered the dust of the dead house-elves beneath his feet and Bellatrix's lifeless body on the floor beside the chicken sandwiches he had vanished instead of eating.

"But to answer the question you asked me, Harry, no, I don't think she suffered when she died. There are curses that will kill you slowly and painfully, but _Avada Kedavra_ is too fast. Bellatrix didn't have time to feel pain. _Avada Kedavra_ usually leaves an expression of surprise on the victim's face even if he or she knew it was coming." He swallowed hard as he thought of James and Lily. He didn't need to tell Harry where he'd gotten his first-hand information; he could see that Harry knew.

"Okay," said Harry. He stood up again, and this time Sirius didn't stop him. "Let's talk to Dumbledore."

* * *

Dumbledore ushered Harry and Sirius into his office with a polite wave. "Before we begin our scheduled meeting, Sirius, I must inform you as Harry's godfather that several professors have brought it to my attention that Harry's marks have been slipping. They are most concerned. Harry's academic work improved greatly when you entered his life and has become progressively stronger even as the assignments have grown progressively more difficult. It was difficult for them not to notice a sudden regression just before the OWLs."

"I can't say I'm surprised," said Sirius. "As I know Harry has been skipping Quidditch practice too."

"Not skipping," Harry injected. "If I skipped, Voldemort wouldn't be able to kill me because Angelina would do it first."

"But you've been spending less time on the pitch than your teammates."

"I'm a Seeker. It doesn't matter if I'm there." Both Sirius and Dumbledore let the silence stretch as they observed Harry. "Fine," said Harry at last. "I might be dead before the Quidditch final and before the OWLs. And since I can't even fight Voldemort- I just have to submit to him- that makes revising twice as useless."

"And if you aren't dead a month from now?" Sirius asked. "Won't you wish that you practiced and studied? Don't you have ambitions of becoming an Auror, which would require you to qualify for almost all of the NEWT-level classes?"

Harry didn't answer.

"Harry," said Dumbledore gravely. "I truly believe that you will live if we do this correctly. I would never have bothered you about your marks, and certainly not in front of your godfather, if I believed otherwise."

Harry shrugged.

"Do you want me to take you out of school until we're ready for the… confrontation? We can go everywhere you've ever dreamed of, Harry. Would you like to see Paris? Japan? The North Pole?" Sirius found himself wishing that Harry would say yes.

"No," said Harry. "I want to stay here with Ron and Hermione."

Sirius had expected that. "In that case, I know that it's unfair and difficult, but try not to give up on your classes."

"I haven't given up. I've hardly skived off at all." Harry sat up a little straighter, suggesting to both Sirius and Dumbledore that the matter was no longer open for discussion. "So where's Voldemort? Or whatever's left of him?"

"I've been observing him in Albania for some time," said Dumbledore. "He has received a visit from a friend of mine almost every night. This friend has convinced Voldemort of his loyalty-"

"Not Snape!" Sirius objected. Snape had been responsible for orphaning Harry in the first place. Sirius wasn't about to hand him the last Potter because he had told Dumbledore that he was sorry.

"Who would you prefer?" Dumbledore's frustration was palpable and almost frightening. "Lucius Malfoy, perhaps? Peter Pettigrew? There are very few individuals who have any chance of gaining Voldemort's trust. Severus performs the job admirably, and he will be joining us in a moment to make his report."

"I don't like it," said Sirius.

"You don't have to," said Dumbledore. "But unless you can offer me a superior agent, you will behave in a civil manner toward Severus."

"The way he behaves civilly toward his students? I understand that he read a _Daily Prophet_ article about me to his students today."

"I read that article as well," said Dumbledore. "I was most interested to learn that- come in, Severus."

Sirius hadn't heard a knock; Snape must have used Legilimency to announce his arrival. Snape's lip curled with distaste as he looked at Sirius and Harry, but he turned his attention to Dumbledore. "He is nearly strong enough for me to brew him the potion that will return him to his body."

"And he continues to believe that you are his loyal servant?"

"He hasn't a choice. His other options are in Azkaban or dead. He is quite pleased that I never deserted my post here- he always wished to use me as a spy inside Hogwarts, as you know- and that I can give him sixteen years' worth of information on you."

"He isn't angry that you didn't help him steal the Philosopher's Stone?" asked Harry.

Snape glowered, but, to Sirius' shock, he answered. "No, Potter, he isn't angry that I did not help him steal the Philosopher's Stone. He did not reveal himself to me at the time. I informed him that I saw nothing but a greedy and unworthy wizard in Quirrell attempting to steal the stone and I did all I could to thwart him."

"You see," said Dumbledore quietly to Harry, "Voldemort's unwillingness to trust anyone is a weakness we can counter by working together."

Harry nodded. Sirius, who knew that Dumbledore's lecture in miniature was directed at him rather than at Harry, politely refrained from snorting.

Dumbledore returned his attention to Snape. "Have you promised Voldemort that you will bring Harry to him so that Harry's blood can be used to make the potion as strong as possible?"

"I have."

"Then you shall tell us the nearest date that you can bring Harry to Voldemort so as to restore his body."

"Easter, perhaps," said Snape. "The Dark Lord will appreciate the symbolism." Sirius squirmed inwardly. Easter had been his first suggestion, too. He didn't like to agree with Snape about anything, not even something so mundane as a date. "But Headmaster, as you know, the instant that the Dark Lord returns to his body, he is likely to cast the killing curse on the Boy Who Lived."

"Exactly," said Dumbledore.

Sirius almost laughed. He and Harry might not have known that Dumbledore planned to use Snape to resurrect Voldemort, but Snape clearly had not known that Dumbledore planned to permit Harry to submit to _Avada Kedavra._ Dumbledore had kept secrets from all of them.

Snape, though, was not laughing.

Dumbledore took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"On the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill Harry, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the killing curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort's soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that collapsing building. Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes. And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die."

"So the boy…" Snape looked again at Harry, but he seemed to look through him. "The boy must die?"

"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential."

"I thought… all these years… that we were protecting him for her. For Lily. But you have kept him alive all these years so that he can die at the right moment? I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily's son safe. Now you tell me that you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter-"

"What do you care?" Harry interrupted. "Do you want me to live just so you can keep trying to humiliate me in class by reading articles about Sirius?"

"I thought that the students might need to be up to date on whether your godfather's cheekbones can cut glass," said Snape. "And this has nothing to do with you."

Harry laughed. "I'm the one who's about to stand in front of the killing curse, so I think it does have something to do with me. I know that you and my mum were friends-"

Snape whirled on Sirius, his eyes full of hatred. "You told him?"

"I wasn't planning to, but I saw an opportunity to force Petunia to behave herself and I took it."

"Leaving him with Petunia in the first place was a terrible decision if you wanted him to grow up to be willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good," said Snape.

"I actually agree with that," admitted Sirius, almost physically uncomfortable with the sensation. He didn't know what was worse: agreeing with Snape, or defending the decision to hand Harry to Voldemort while Snape raged against it.

"And you?" Snape asked. "You, for all of your protestations of love for James Potter's son, are willing to watch him die?"

"James believed that there were things worth dying for, and so do I, and so does Harry."

"Because you've spent two years brainwashing him!"

"No one brainwashed me!"

"Silence!" Dumbledore raised his wand, and Sirius wasn't certain exactly what sort of jinx the headmaster managed to cast on all three of them simultaneously, but it achieved its intended effect. His lips pressed themselves together, unwilling to let him make another sound.

"Severus, what I was unable to tell you because none of the three of you chose to hear me or each other out, is that I believe that when Lord Voldemort casts the killing curse on Harry, he will permanently destroy only the piece of his own soul rather than Harry himself. Harry will revive. Sirius and Harry have independent reason to believe the same. If Voldemort is permitted to curse Harry, Voldemort will become mortal and your debt will have been paid. You need no longer, as you say, feel any obligation to spy for me or lie for me. You will be welcome to continue on at Hogwarts if you choose the life of a professor, but the choice will be yours- not mine, and certainly not Lord Voldemort's. If we succeed on Easter, we all all be free. You from your promise to protect Lily's son, Sirius from his agreement not to assert formal guardianship over Harry, and most of all Harry himself from the burden of carrying a piece of Voldemort with him. Now, can the uneasy truce between the three of you last long enough to achieve these ends?"

They all consented silently.

**_To be continued._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: The conversation beginning with "on the night" and ending with "pig for slaughter" is rather obviously borrowed from Deathly Hallows .


	77. Harry and the Weasleys

Harry's heart pounded when he approached Ron, but he reminded himself that he had asked Cho Chang to the Yule Ball, made a general request for a Yule Ball date to the Common Room moments before the ball started, apologized to Cedric Diggory for nearly killing him, invited twenty people to his birthday party, kissed three different girls at that party, convinced Angelina to create a practice Quidditch team, and led a school-wide riot when Professor Lupin had been sacked.

He could certainly ask his best friend to change his Easter plans.

"What are your parents doing for Easter?" he demanded as he dropped into his usual seat beside Ron. They had somehow managed to be early for Charms; not even Professor Flitwick was in the room yet.

Ron looked at Harry as if Harry were suddenly speaking a foreign language. "Nothing, as far as I know. Why?"

"You never go home at Easter."

"No one goes home at Easter except for homesick little firsties and a few Hufflepuffs. Maybe someone who's got a dying grandparent."

So Ron considered the impending death of someone he cared about to be an acceptable reason to go home for Easter. That was just as well. "I want us to go to the Burrow for Easter if your parents will invite us."

"Why?" asked Ron. "I'll owl at lunch. But why?"

"I didn't visit you last summer and I miss the Burrow." It sounded silly to Harry's own ears, but he couldn't very well tell Ron that he wanted to say goodbye to Ron's parents before marched to his death. At least, he couldn't very well tell Ron if he didn't want to watch Ron turn into an entirely different person, one who was worried and angry and would probably insist on going with Harry to meet Voldemort. Selfishly, Harry didn't want to spend his last weeks with that version of Ron. He wanted to keep Ron the way Ron usually was.

"If you want," shrugged Ron, who clearly didn't understand how a person could possibly miss the Burrow. Ron had grown up in the best home in the world and he didn't even know it.

"It'll be nice to be somewhere where no one's talking about how many hours they study for the OWLs every day."

Ron chortled appreciatively. "That's a good point. Of course, if we bring Hermione, she'll fix that nicely…" He nodded at Hermione as she entered the room, breathless and lugging far too many books, as usual. Harry drank in the sight. He didn't know how many times he would see it again. "You'll want to come, I suppose?" Ron asked Hermione as she deposited her bag beside them.

"Come where?"

"To the Burrow, for Easter. Harry and I fancied a little time away from school."

Harry was so pleased with the way Ron had adopted the plan as his own that he almost didn't notice how pink Hermione's cheeks grew. "I- I can't," she said in a strangely high voice.

"Of course you can," said Ron. "You can be away from the library for a couple of days. We'll even leave you alone at night to study if you want. My parents and my brothers have all taken the OWLs, they'll give you advice if you want, especially Percy, it'll make his day if you ask…"

"It's not that," said Hermione.

"Then what?"

"I've already made plans."

"You never visit your parents at Easter."

"Not my parents."

It was Ron's turn to redden. "You're not going to see _Krum_ , are you?"

"Why not?" demanded Hermione. "I haven't seen him since the summer, and he's always writing how much he misses me…"

Harry was very grateful when Flitwick cast a charm that caused a tornado to rip loudly if harmlessly through the classroom and invited the students to imitate his example. Whatever Ron had been planning to say to Hermione was lost in the wind.

* * *

Ron and Hermione were constantly annoyed with each other until it was time for the Hogwarts Express to leave for London.

In Harry's opinion, the Hogwarts Express always had a way of making everything better. He was especially pleased that because there were so few students on board Ron and Hermione didn't bother checking in at the prefects' compartment. Hermione told a few frightened-looking first years to come find her if they needed anything and that was all.

Harry had expected Ginny to join them in their compartment- once Ron had asked about coming home, Mrs. Weasley had exhorted all of her children to accompany him- but instead she stayed with Fred and George. The twins were loudly complaining about the inconvenience of being summoned to the Burrow so soon after they had secured a premise on Diagon Alley for their new joke shop.

So Harry had one last train ride with Ron and Hermione all to himself, and he appreciated every minute of it.

* * *

When they reached King's Cross Station, he pretended to have left his cloak in their compartment so he could say goodbye to Hermione alone.

"You're not going to tell me I shouldn't visit Viktor, are you?" Hermione said dangerously before Harry could even open his mouth. "Because I've heard quite enough of that from Ron."

"I like Viktor," said Harry, and it was true. "Dumbledore talked about his strength of character at the Triwizard Tournament, and I reckon Dumbledore's right."

"I'm glad at least one of my friends is happy for me."

"If he makes you happy, I'm happy for you."

"He does."

"He… treats you like you deserve to be treated?"

"Yes." Hermione's face hardened in the dangerous way she usually reserved for Ron. "Why would you even ask that? Because he's the big famous Quidditch star and I'm just a bookworm with frizzy hair?"

"You know I think you're brilliant and you'll probably be Minister for Magic one day. I'd ask that about any bloke you chose because someone has to."

Hermione's eyes filled with tears, and Harry prepared to flee. He never knew what to do when girls cried, even Hermione, who didn't exactly count as a girl. (He knew better than to tell her that.) "Ron wouldn't."

"You know what's going on between you and Ron," said Harry.

It startled the tears out of Hermione's eyes. "I didn't know that you knew."

"I used to worry about it a little. The two of of you are my best friends, and if you cut me out-"

_"That would never happen."_

"Or if you broke up and I had to go back and forth between you-"

"That _might_ have happened."

"Nothing in my life has ever been as good as being friends with you and Ron," said Harry. He didn't usually say things like that, even though he thought them, and he braced himself for Hermione to burst into fresh tears and hug him as hard as she could.

She didn't. Instead, she stepped back and evaluated him shrewdly. "You're saying goodbye to me."

"Of course I am. You're on your way to Bulgaria, and I-"

"Just happened to _forget your cloak_ ."

"People forget cloaks all the time."

"You don't. You grew up with nothing but your horrible cousin's hand-me-downs. Once you got things of your own, you were careful with them."

"Yes, I was careful enough to realize I'd left it and come back for it."

Hermione ignored him. "I won't go with Viktor if you don't want me to."

"I want you to go with Viktor," said Harry even though it was only sort of true. He looked out the window to avoid looking at Hermione and saw that Krum was waiting on the platform. He'd come to meet Hermione and escort her to Bulgaria. That was good. He waved to Krum; Hermione turned around and waved, too. "I'll tell you all about what I'm thinking when we're back at Hogwarts."

"Yes, you will," said Hermione, but the whole of her attention was no longer on Harry, and it was easy for Harry to make his escape in the midst of a furious Ron; a petulant Fred and George; a beaming Mrs. Weasley; a distracted Mr. Weasley; and an eye-rolling Ginny.

* * *

Mr. Weasley paid close attention to Harry as they lined up to take the Floo Network from London to the Burrow. "None of you are dragging trunks and owls, so it didn't make sense to borrow a car," Mr. Weasley said with obvious regret. Harry felt a pang of guilt; after all, he and Ron had once borrowed Mr. Weasley's beloved flying Ford Anglia and failed to secure it before it returned to the wild in the Forbidden Forest.

"Have you caught any wizards enchanting Muggles' cars lately?" Harry asked.

"Just one, and he didn't do much of a job of it. He was more of a threat to himself than to the Muggles he was trying to torment. I haven't seen a truly excellent example of that sort of enchantment since- well, since I saw your godfather's motorcycle a few summers ago. He still has it?"

Harry nodded. "He loves it. I'm sure he'd like to talk it over with you again."

"I look forward to it. Now, speak clearly when you step into the flames. I know using Floo Powder doesn't come as naturally to you as it does to someone who was raised in the wizarding world."

"Thank you." Harry accepted the Floo Powder. "Thank you for everything. For letting me visit so many times."

"You're Ron's best mate, of course we'd have you to stay," said Mr. Weasley vaguely before gesturing once more to the fire.

* * *

Saying thank you to Mrs. Weasley was both easier and more difficult. Easier because she seemed to understand what Harry was trying to say. More difficult because she cried, and Harry didn't like Mrs. Weasley's tears any more than he liked Hermione's.

She gave Harry a long, tight hug. "You don't have to thank me, dear. It's my pleasure every time we've had you around. I missed you last summer. You know, we would have had you all summer, every summer, if it had been all right with Dumbledore. I was so relieved when Ron wrote me to say the two of you wanted to come home for Easter." She released Harry and cupped his face in her hand. "You're growing so quickly. Going through that stage where boys look like they've had stretching charms put on them. Make sure you eat as much as you want at dinner even if it seems like too much. We have enough."

"You have seven children and you always make room for me." Even after five years, Harry could hardly believe it.

"Once you have seven, a few more hardly makes a difference. Especially a boy as wonderful as you." She hugged Harry a second time. "Now, go find Ron unless you'd like a snack before dinner?"

* * *

He climbed the stairs toward Ron's room but paused on the first floor. Ginny's door stood ajar and he couldn't stop himself peeking inside.

Ginny was halfway out the window, a dilapidated broom clutched in one hand. He laughed aloud.

Ginny spun around to face him. "Oh, it's you," she said, visibly relieved.

"I know you said that you used to steal your brothers' brooms to practice flying, but I assumed you stole them from the broom shed, not that you flew out the window."

"Close the door," said Ginny, and Harry did. "All the good brooms are at school. It wasn't worth bringing them home since we're going right back, but it's a beautiful day, and I just want to fly, you know?"

Harry nodded. He understood just wanting to fly.

Ginny grinned devilishly. "You can come, but we only have the one broom. I flew behind you last year, so I suppose it's your turn to fly behind me."

Harry couldn't believe that Ginny was speaking so cheerfully about an excursion that had ended with Ginny under the Imperius Curse and Harry almost killing one of his friends while under the influence of a terrible magical object.

Ginny tossed the broom from one hand to the other. "But if you don't have the nerve-"

"Let's go," said Harry. He had flown with Ginny all year at Quidditch practice, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would be able to bend the old broom to her will even with his added weight behind her.

Ginny kicked off and pulled the broom straight up. "Your balance is wonderful, Harry," she marveled as they soared above the Burrow. "I could tell from watching you, but it's different to feel it."

"I thought the same about you when we flew together last year."

He imagined an alternate reality where he and Ginny had always flown together, where this wouldn't be the first and last time he pressed himself against her back and felt her hair brush his face along with the fresh spring wind. He didn't think he would mind living in that reality.

Ginny swerved from side to side and they both laughed with the exhilaration of it all. "I'm sorry I didn't get to know you better, sooner," he said. For some reason he was barely able to raise his voice above a whisper, but as near as his mouth was to her ear, she heard him.

"I'm sorry I was so silly when we first met you."

"You weren't silly, you were young."

"Young and silly," Ginny decided. "I never should have kept writing in that diary after the first time it answered me."

"I always admired the way you handled that. Having a bit of Voldemort in your head and surviving… well, it's something I'd like to be able to do." She didn't need to know how much.

She laughed again and it was a beautiful sound. "Surviving You-Know-Who is kind of your thing, Harry. I don't know if anyone's told you, but they call you the Boy Who Lived." Ginny executed a neat dive to bring them closer to the Burrow again.

"You're so good on this broom that you could probably turn the Chudley Cannons around."

"I suppose I'd take the Cannons if they were the only team that offered, but I'd rather the Holyhead Harpies," said Ginny casually, and Harry could tell that this was a topic to which she had devoted considerable thought.

"An all-witch team after growing up with six brothers?"

"Exactly."

"I know you'll make it," he told her.

The back of her ears reddened the way Ron's always did when he was pleased. "We should get back before Ron misses you and gets jealous," she said. "According to him, you're supposed to be _his_ mate, you know, not mine or the twins'."

* * *

When Harry belatedly walked into Ron's room at the top of the Burrow, Ron was nowhere to be found. Deciding that Ron must have gone down to the kitchen to look for him, Harry jogged back down the stairs. He stopped on the second floor. Percy's room was empty; Percy must have been at work. The door to the twins' room was closed. Harry knocked.

"Come in," Fred and George called in unison.

"Hello, Harry," said Fred.

"Come to apologize for making us come home when we should be preparing for our grand opening?" asked George, but there was no bite to his complaint.

"I just came to tell you how great you both are." Harry tried to make it sound like a joke and hoped that the twins would understand, later, if they needed to.

"We know," they agreed.

"Are you opening as soon as the term ends?"

"The day after we graduate."

"As long as we can get the new fireworks right."

"We open with or without the fireworks."

"It'll be better with the new fireworks."

"What are the new fireworks like?" Harry wanted to know.

Fred shook a reprimanding finger at him in imitation of Mrs. Weasley. "You'll find out when you come to the grand opening."

"Sirius has to be there since he's our backer, there's no way we'd even be opening the shop without him-"

 _"You're doing what?"_ asked a dangerous voice from somewhere behind Harry.

Fred and George paled behind their identical freckles.

Harry quickly determined that he would rather approach a resurrected Voldemort, unarmed, than be caught between Mrs. Weasley and the twins on the day she found out that they were planning the grand opening of their joke shop.

Ron seemed to be similarly concerned for Harry's safety and he quickly reached around his mother to pull Harry down the stairs. Mrs. Weasley's voice echoed behind them.

"It wasn't enough that you didn't put any effort into studying for your OWLs? It wasn't enough that you kept inventing new pranks when you could have been preparing for your NEWTs? _You took out a loan from a man who spent most of his life in prison to buy a shop_ ?"

"To be fair, he was innocent and he shouldn't have gone to prison in the first place," said one of the twins bravely.

_"He went to prison because he was reckless and didn't control his temper! Harry wouldn't have been raised by those horrible Muggles if Sirius had made Harry his first priority! And regardless of whether he belonged in Azkaban, that is where he spent his life. That has shaped how he makes his decisions. What do you suppose he will do if you are unable to repay him? What do you suppose he wants in return for that money? What sort of man makes business deals with children- I don't imagine he waited for you to turn seventeen-and doesn't consult their parents?"_

The whole Burrow was shaking with Mrs. Weasley's fury as Harry and Ron sprinted toward the nearest hiding spot: the broom shed. They settled down inside.

Harry knew that it was time for him to find a way to say goodbye to Ron, but he didn't know how to begin.

"I don't fancy being Sirius the next time Mum sees him," said Ron, shaking his head. "Maybe we'd better make sure they're never in the same room."

"That'll be a problem since Sirius is coming to pick me up. I'm- er- not taking the train back to school."

"Why not?"

"Because Dumbledore and Sirius have something they want me to do," Harry admitted, thinking that that much of the truth was harmless.

"Is it about those bits of Voldemort's soul you mentioned last year? Like Ravenclaw's diadem?"

Harry nodded. "That's it, yes."

"Are you going looking for one?"

"Dumbledore says he knows where it is but that I can come help destroy it if I want."

"Wicked." Ron looked delighted. "Don't suppose I could come?"

"Don't suppose your mum would let you go anywhere Sirius is," Harry said, grateful for the easy excuse. "I'm sorry for causing…" he gestured aimlessly toward the Burrow. They could still hear Mrs. Weasley's voice if not her words.

"It had to happen eventually. She's known that they had money from somewhere since last summer. That's why she wouldn't let them come to Florida with Ginny and me. And they couldn't keep hiding that they bought a building."

"But you've always shared your family with me-"

"I have too much of a family. Why wouldn't I share it?"

"Not everyone would. You're the best, Ron. You're the best out of all of them. You're the best friend, too."

Ron's ears reddened. "Why are you being weird?" he asked. "Did someone hex you on the train?"

Harry laughed. "No."

"Did you have a problem with the Floo Powder? Why did it take you so long to come upstairs?"

"I stopped to talk to Ginny and she dared me to jump out a window onto a broom."

"Make sure you don't tell Mum about that. Her food's still great even when she's in a state, but she needs time to cook instead of just yelling. Not that she can't do both at once." Ron made an aimless gesture that made it clear he considered the matter closed. "So tell me about this trip with Dumbledore and Sirius."

"I don't know much."

"Do you know where you're going?"

"Albania, unless something changed."

"The bits of soul can _move_ ?"

It took everything in Harry not to touch his scar. "Sometimes. Sometimes he put bits of his soul into something that was already alive. Like a snake."

"Wow. I wish I could come."

"I wish you could, too." It would be easier with Ron by his side. But far too dangerous for Ron. He remembered Lupin's warning that Voldemort had been willing to kill Cedric just because Cedric happened to be standing next to Harry.

"I could help!" Ron continued enthusiastically. "Not sure how, but I could!"

"Like when you beat McGonagall's chess set first year!" said Harry. "And when you went down into the Chamber of Secrets, and Pettigrew in the Shrieking Shack…"

"So tell them you won't go without me," Ron suggested.

The request might have been the last Ron ever made of Harry. "I'll ask," he said. He would ask, Sirius and Dumbledore would say no, and Ron would stay safe.

"Brilliant," Ron breathed.

It wasn't, but that was okay.

**_To be continued_ **

* * *


	78. Tonks Interlude J

Tonks let herself into Sirius' house on Easter morning. She could barely make her way through the front hall, packed as it was with brightly colored boxes bearing the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes logo. One wall was covered with nothing but packages of Sticky Trainers; another was a mixture of Fanged Flyers, Box O'Rockets, and Electric Shock Shakes.

"Today isn't a good day, Tonks," said Sirius.

"Why's that?" she asked.

He didn't answer. A different tactic would be needed to approach him. "Fred and George have certainly been busy."

"They're graduating in a few months and they have new premises in Diagon Alley. They'll want to open straight away as soon as they've sat their NEWTs, so they've had to build up their inventory."

She stumbled into a stack of something labeled "Hair Style Transformation Brushes" and sent them scattering to the corners of the room. Sirius grabbed her before she was able to careen into the love potions.

"Sit here and don't move without my permission," said Sirius. "I do not want either one of us to be soaked with Love Potion #9."

"Wouldn't work on me," Tonks informed him as she took the proffered seat. "Nothing could make me love anyone else but Remus."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Sirius. He didn't sound glad.

"You wanted me to fall in love with him."

"So I did." Sirius pulled an uneven mess of parchment from behind a mountain of Skiving Snackboxes. "This is his mail. You can sort through it and get rid of the insults and keep the ones you'd like him to see, if you want. You still have the ones from the day he was arrested?"

"They're waiting for him in my wardrobe. And I saved the _Daily Prophet_ with the students' formal letter."

"Good."

She set about sorting through the mail as Sirius had suggested. It was fitting that she should do it today. Today was the day that she would tell her parents that she planned to marry Remus.

She was pleased to find that most of the letters were supportive; several were grateful tributes from parents whose children had reported a sudden interest in the study of Defense after Remus had become their teacher. She was nearly in tears as she read one aloud to Sirius.

Sirius was unmoved. His frown neither deepened nor relaxed.

"Is it Bellatrix?" she asked at last.

"What's Bellatrix got to do with anything?"

"Is she why you're so sad?"

He laughed in the harsh, barking way that meant he found nothing funny about the situation. "Merlin's pants, no. Why would I bother being sad about Bellatrix?"

"She was your cousin and you had to kill her. I didn't feel great about killing Karkaroff, and I didn't even know him." She remembered for an instant the smell of the sea air and the moment when she'd grabbed Karkaroff's corpse with one hand and Kinglsey's rope with the other.

"Karkaroff would have killed you and Bellatrix would have killed both of us," said Sirius bluntly. "During the war, we asked far more of Aurors and members of the Order than to kill in self-defense. I'm not saying it isn't best to bring someone in alive if you can. But- Bellatrix-" He shook his head. "Shouldn't you be at your parents' for Easter?"

"Shouldn't you be?"

"No. And don't push me on that, Nymphadora."

 _"Don't call me that,"_ she snapped.

"It's your name. I even put it on the family tree at Grimmauld Place while I was waiting for Bellatrix to show up."

"Didn't they blast Mum's name off when she married Dad?"

"I put Anna back on. Added Ted, too, of course." Sirius resumed glaring at the wall.

Sirius was, Tonks realized, in such a foul mood that she didn't even want him to join her at her parents' house for her wonderful, yet delicate, announcement. Any words he might say in support of Remus wouldn't even be helpful; her parents knew that Sirius and Remus had been friends before Tonks had even been born. They would assume that Sirius would speak on Remus' behalf even if he didn't think the marriage would be in Tonks' best interest.

Mad-Eye would be a more credible witness. Everyone knew Tonks was Mad-Eye's favorite. Even Karkaroff had known when he'd begun to strangle her.

"Why aren't you coming to dinner?" she asked. "I'm not gong to push you to come, but I need to tell Mum something."

"Tell her whatever you like. Tell her I'm sick, tell her I'm bad company, tell her I've run off and joined the circus."

"If I tell her any of those things, she'll most likely come after you herself, especially if she thinks you're really just upset about the whole killing her sister thing."

_"The last thing I am upset about is Bellatrix Lestrange!"_

She didn't step back. She stood and glared at him.

"It's about Harry," said Sirius quietly after a long moment.

Tonks' heart lightened. "Well, that's the best excuse! You obviously haven't been a parent for that long if you didn't think of using it sooner. Children are the best way of getting out of social obligations you don't want to deal with. Mum and Dad always skipped our most boring neighbor's parties by saying I had a performance at school they had to attend. Or if they felt like being more realistic, they said I was grounded and they had to supervise me…"

She trailed off, realizing that she was rambling. Harry didn't have a Quidditch match and he wasn't in trouble for wandering around the Forbidden Forest. "This is Voldemort business, isn't it?" She still didn't feel quite right saying the name, but she knew that both Sirius and Remus would respect her more if she did. And she saw their point. Fear of a name gave Voldemort a power he didn't need or deserve.

"Yes," said Sirius. "This is Voldemort business."

"Can't I help? I have a good wand and proper training. If this is something that makes you this worried about Harry, you can use all the help you can get. I already know so many of your secrets, and you can trust me with more, I promise."

"I do trust you. You- might be able to help. I'll message you if you can. But for now, you need to leave me alone."

She nodded and accepted the dismissal. She was glad that she hadn't told him about her plans for the afternoon. But neither would she give up her plans unless Sirius summoned her. She had almost left telling Remus that she loved him until too late. She wouldn't ever leave their relationship until too late again. When he got out of prison- if he even got out of prison- she was going to marry him. She would marry him before the inevitable war between Voldemort and Harry Potter engulfed them all again.

* * *

As always, Mad-Eye spent dinner checking his food for poison and refusing to drink the wine. Luckily, Tonks' parents were used to him by now.

As they finished the meal, the conversation turned to politics. "I think Umbridge has finally overstepped," Mad-Eye rumbled. "No one is taking her seriously, and not even the werewolf law is as popular as Fudge expected it to be."

"As anyone would have expected it to be," said Andromeda. "When you announce that the eccentric headmaster of the best school for magic in the world decided to appoint a werewolf to a position of authority, you expect the children's families to panic. I haven't had a chance to ask you, Nymphadora- did you know that he was a werewolf when you were working with him?"

"He told me," said Tonks, and she decided to seize the opening she had been granted. "He told me the first time we kissed."

Mad-Eye was genuinely unsurprised; he'd already known about that.

Andromeda hid whatever surprise she might have felt.

Ted dropped his glass of wine. "The first time you did _what_ ?" he asked.

"Kissed," repeated Tonks firmly.

"And this… romantic entanglement.. is ongoing?"

"I plan to ask him to marry me the minute he's released from Azkaban."

"Why the rush?" His voice was almost neutral, but she could tell that he didn't like the idea at all.

"It's not a rush. When you were my age, you'd been married for five years and had a child."

"That situation was a bit different."

"How?"

"We needed to get married before your mother's family put all of its wealth and power into forcing her into a so-called 'proper match.'"

"And I need to get married before the Ministry decides that because my husband is legally a beast, we shouldn't be allowed to marry." _And before Voldemort rises again,_ she thought but didn't add.

"How well do you know him?" asked Ted. "Your mother and I were very young, but we'd been at school together for seven years."

Tonks snorted. "Please. You were in different houses and you had to sneak around if you even wanted to dance at a ball. Remus and I have worked together and traveled together. We know each other's friends and families."

"Speaking of which, he's the same age as Sirius. Only a few years younger than your mother and me."

"You were teenagers when I was born. It's not like he's forty years older than I am. And so what if he's older? It's not like there's some kind of power imbalance. I'm an Auror. I have more power and more support and more money than he does. And I know my parents wouldn't dare suggest that a woman shouldn't marry a man who has less money than she does."

"Of course not." Ted tore his fingers through his hair. "But you can't expect me not to be surprised. I've barely met this man. He's been by at holidays sometimes, but less often than Mad-Eye." Ted jerked his head in Mad-Eye's direction. "You're quiet."

Mad-Eye shrugged. "I've known about this for over a year. It came up in the line of duty."

"And what did you think when you found out?"

"I wouldn't have guessed it." Mad-Eye offered Ted the closest thing to a smile his scarred face would allow. "I never would have chosen them for one another, but I understand why they made the choice themselves. I don't have any concerns about it. My protege could have made a far stupider decision. Some of my former proteges did."

"'Could have done worse' isn't overwhelmingly reassuring, Mad-Eye," said Ted, but Tonks could tell that he was getting used to the idea. That left Andromeda.

"Mum?" asked Tonks. "What do you think?"

"I think congratulations are in order." Andromeda flicked her wand, and a bottle of champagne flew to the table, accompanied by three champagne flutes.

"No questions about when this happened or whether I've thought it through?"

"I don't need to ask," said Andromeda. "You are my daughter and I have always known better than to argue with you when your mind was made up."

"Thanks, Mum," Tonks smiled.

Her mind was, indeed, made up.

_**To be continued.** _


	79. Harry and the Resurrection

Harry and Ron spent much of their holiday dodging Percy. With Mrs. Weasley and the twins more at odds than usual (though a bit of bellowing had been normal for as long as Harry had known them), Percy looked more than ever to Ron as a possible ally. He seemed to think that Ron's being made prefect had revealed hitherto unexplored depths of Ron's character and he even had a special gift for Ron: an OWL review book. Harry knew that some of the students at school had them, but they were prohibitively expensive and in short supply.

"It'll make Hermione happy," Harry said to Ron as Ron turned the book over in his hands after Percy finally left them alone. Hermione had coveted this particular review book but had been unable to do more than cast longing glances at the groups of Ravenclaws and Slytherins huddled around the few copies at Hogwarts. (Harry knew that the Slytherin copy belonged to Draco Malfoy; he didn't know or care who owned the Ravenclaw copy.)

"Yeah, if she doesn't decide to stay in Bulgaria with Krum forever," said Ron darkly.

"Hermione wouldn't miss her OWLs for Viktor Krum or anyone else," Harry declared, and they set the book aside.

When it was finally time for Easter dinner, everyone seemed to have said (or shouted) everything they wanted to say to everyone else already. They ate the food Mrs. Weasley prepared- it was as delicious as always- almost complete in silence.

Harry's eyes strayed occasionally to his bag, which he had hidden near the Burrow's front door. When Sirius arrived, there would be no time wasted scrambling up to Ron's room near the attic. Waiting to come face-to-face with Voldemort felt surprisingly like waiting for the final Quidditch match of the season. He just wanted things to get underway so he could have some modicum of control, whether real or perceived, over what was going on.

Besides, he wanted to keep Sirius and Mrs. Weasley from coming face-to-face if it was at all possible. Harry wouldn't be able to confront Voldemort at all if he first died in the crossfire between his godfather and his best friend's mother.

And so as soon as Harry glimpsed Sirius approaching through the Burrow's front window, he jumped up from the table and grabbed his bag, calling _thank you_ over his shoulder.

But it was not to be.

Mrs. Weasley stood up, too, and followed Harry to the door. " _Sirius Black_ ," she thundered. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of the Howler Mrs. Weasley had once sent to Hogwarts after Harry and Ron had borrowed and destroyed Mr. Weasley's flying Ford Anglia.

Sirius casually draped one arm around Harry's shoulders. "Yes, Molly?" he asked pleasantly. Far too pleasantly. Harry could feel that Sirius' body was tense against his own.

_"How dare you loan over 1000 galleons to two underaged children without telling their parents? You have ruined my sons' lives-"_

The twins appeared in the doorway behind their mother.

"Our lives aren't ruined, Mum."

"We would have found a way to open the shop with or without the loan-"

Mrs. Weasley ignored them. _"What did you expect to get in exchange?"_ she demanded.

"I asked them to make certain there was no one hiding under an invisibility cloak in their box at the World Cup two summers ago. They did, and they received the money they earned."

Harry wouldn't have thought it possible for Mrs. Weasley to get even more angry, but he would have been wrong. _"You deliberately sent them after a Death Eater! They were children! How dare you risk their lives? How dare you use them to do your dirty work and circumvent the Ministry? How dare you continue to hold that loan over their heads?"_

Sirius glanced over Mrs. Weasley's head at the twins. "Fred, George, consider the money a gift. You and I have no further business with one another."

Mrs. Weasley rounded on the twins. "Go back inside, both of you." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and the twins, looking more frightened than Harry had ever seen them, obeyed.

"All right, Harry," said Sirius as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. "Ready to Apparate?"

"Yeah," said Harry.

"No," said Mrs. Weasley. "Harry, do not leave. Why don't you go inside and wait with the others?"

Sirius tightened his grip on Harry's shoulder. "I think you can say whatever you have to say in front of Harry. If it concerns him, he deserves to know."

Mrs. Weasley's eyes narrowed. "All right, where are you taking him?"

"To my house for the night. I just wanted to spend some time with him before we went back to school. All that end-of-term busyness, you know, I probably won't hear from him again until after he's finished the OWLs and won the Quidditch Cup." Sirius lied with such practiced ease that Harry almost believed him.

"Harry, dear?" asked Mrs. Weasley. "Do you feel safe going home with Sirius?"

"Well, yeah," said Harry stupidly. He didn't like what Mrs. Weasley was implying about Sirius, but it was nice to know that she worried about him.

"Harry has had so many kind things to say to Arthur and the children and me since he's been here," said Mrs. Weasley. "It's almost as if he was saying goodbye, as if he expected to do something dangerous. It reminded me of Fabian and Gideon in those last two years."

"I was just trying to be polite," Harry lied quickly. He, like Sirius, had spent his whole life learning how to lie when necessary.

"And you have always been ever so polite," said Mrs. Weasley. "No thanks to your godfather, of course, who wasn't around to raise you-"

 _"What did you say?"_ asked Sirius dangerously. The false air of calm evaporated.

"I said that you weren't a very good godfather to Harry while you were in Azkaban! I notice that you haven't even taken formal guardianship of him since you've been out. I think it would be better if Harry stayed here and returned to Hogwarts with Ron and the others tomorrow."

"You can say what you like about your own children. I won't have anything to do with them anymore. But you do not decide where Harry goes and when. You are not Harry's mother-"

"I'm as good as!"

As much as Harry was touched that Mrs. Weasley considered him a member of her family, he was fast losing patience with her mollycoddling. He and Sirius needed to meet up with Dumbledore and Snape. "Let's go," he said to Sirius. "Goodbye," he added to Mrs. Weasley. He wanted to tell her that the things she had said about Sirius were unfair… that it wasn't Sirius' fault he'd been sent to Azkaban for a crime he hadn't committed… that it wasn't Sirius' fault that Harry wasn't allowed to leave the Dursleys… that Sirius certainly wasn't encouraging Harry to do anything dangerous that Harry hadn't already decided to do. But he didn't want his last words to Mrs. Weasley to be an argument. So instead he tightened his grip on Sirius and whispered. "Just Disapparate, please."

Sirius raised his wand and turned to look once more at Mrs. Weasley. "I did think I was doing you a favor, you know. Fred and George's business will keep them in London. They won't be inspired to flee to the far corners of the earth to escape you like your older sons did."

Then Sirius Disapparated before Harry could see how Mrs. Weasley responded.

* * *

They arrived at the edge of Hogwarts grounds, and Sirius wordlessly removed Harry's bag from Harry's arm and tossed it over his own shoulder.

"It's not too late to change your mind," said Sirius roughly as they walked toward the castle. "You can go right back to the Burrow and let Molly protect you from the world for as long as you'd like."

"No, thank you," said Harry.

Sirius looked at him and laughed. "I'm sorry about that. I know it hasn't been the kind of day you envisioned."

"I'm sorry, too," said Harry. "She- she was wrong about you. She was out of order to say that about Azkaban."

"It's nothing I haven't thought about myself. If I had kept my temper that night- if I had explained what we tried to do, what Pettigrew did- if I hadn't gone off on my own to try to capture him when I couldn't even see straight-"

"You didn't deserve it, though. You didn't deserve what happened."

"No," said Sirius so softly that Harry barely heard him. "Nor did you. You don't deserve this, either."

"I'm glad I can do something. Not being able to do anything is the hardest sometimes, right?"

"Right." Sirius sighed, and he suddenly looked very, very old.

Harry didn't want to leave him.

He didn't want to leave any of them.

* * *

Dumbledore and Snape were waiting for them in the Headmaster's office. Both of them looked very tense.

"Are you ready, Harry?" asked Dumbledore.

"Yes, Sir."

"Good." Dumbledore pointed at a plastic toy boat which sat on the corner of his desk. "That is a Portkey. In a few minutes, it will take you and Professor Snape to Albania."

"A few minutes?" asked Harry. After waiting for this moment for hours, days, weeks, a few minutes seemed far too little.

"Just Harry and Snape?" asked Sirius at the same time. His hand tightened on Harry again. "We can't send them in there alone."

"To the contrary, that is the only way we can send them. Lord Voldemort has set up protections that will not allow the rest of us to draw near him without his knowing."

"So what if he knows?"

"If he knows, he will realize that Severus has betrayed him. We need him to believe that Severus is his man until he becomes mortal."

"And when he does become mortal? He'll murder Harry and then start amassing power all over again. He'll make a new set of Horcruxes."

"We will not give him time to do that."

"How? Is Sniv- Severus going to kill him?"

Snape glared at Sirius. "If an ignorant fool like you who spent most of his life in Azkaban instead of continuing his study of magic is capable of eliminating Bellatrix Lestrange, I think I'm capable of at least as much."

"After you've cut off your own arm to make the resurrection potion?" Sirius demanded.

"Be careful, Black, I'll start to believe you're concerned," sneered Snape. "As I am not as much of a whinging coward as your friend Pettigrew, the Dark Lord has been convinced that it is to his benefit to allow me to keep most of my flesh intact."

"You have to cut off a body part to resurrect him?" Harry asked, slightly annoyed that they all seemed to know exactly how this had happened last time but hadn't seen fit to tell him.

"Bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy," Snape intoned the way he always did when he couldn't believe that his students hadn't memorized the list of potion ingredients at first sight. "I'm going to tie you up and take your blood. Do try to make the struggle look believable so the Dark Lord doesn't suspect that you are not his greatest enemy."

"I asked Severus and Sirius not to tell you the details earlier, Harry, because I did not want you to dwell on them." Dumbledore was looking not at Harry but at an enormous pocket watch. "Ninety seconds."

"Not today," objected Sirius. "Not until we have a way to bring a dozen good wands-"

" _Today_ ," Snape returned. "You do not have any useful ability in this matter, and you do not get to vote on when the resurrection will take place."

"Today," Harry repeated. They could not come so far only to stop now. He removed Sirius' arm from around his shoulders, then thought better of it and hugged Sirius as hard as he could. "Take care of Lupin and Tonks," he whispered in Sirius' ear. Sirius needed to remember that someone was on his side, someone believed that they were doing the right thing, someone would still need him if Harry never came back.

Harry thought suddenly of the night he'd awoken from a dream about being forced to kill Cedric only to find himself in Sirius' embrace. _I love you_ , Sirius had chanted. _Love you, love you, love you._

Harry had been disconcerted and embarrassed and had sent Sirius out of the room without saying much of anything in return.

He'd had his last chance with Hermione and the Weasleys. He wouldn't get a last chance with Lupin. This was his last chance with Sirius as Dumbledore's watch ticked loudly behind them.

"I love you," he told Sirius. Then he broke off the hug and nodded at Snape. The two of them gripped the toy boat, and Dumbledore's office vanished in a swirl of color.

* * *

Harry knew that travel by Portkey often resulted in the traveler being slammed into the ground. But he wouldn't give Voldemort the satisfaction of approaching with dirt on his knees. He wouldn't even give Snape the satisfaction of tumbling to the ground, no matter that Snape was on their side.

Harry stayed standing and walked along with Snape through a sort of forest clearing.

And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and he could see nothing at all; his head was about to split open.

Meanwhile Snape conjured tight cords around Harry, tying him from neck to ankles around a tree. It happened so quickly that Harry barely had time to struggle as Snape had instructed him to do.

With practiced skill, Snape produced a stone cauldron. Harry had never seen such a cauldron before. It reminded him more of a Pensieve than the ordinary pewter cauldrons they used in class or even the gold cauldron that technically belonged to him but was mostly used by Fred and George to brew specialized potions for their joke shop. It had a great stone belly large enough for a grown man to sit in.

Presently crackling flames sprang to life beneath the cauldron; the liquid in the cauldron seemed to heat very fast. The surface began not only to bubble, but to send out fiery sparks. Soon the whole surface was alight with sparks. It might have been encrusted with diamonds.

Snape vanished, then, and returned with a bundle of robes, which he set beside the cauldron. The thing inside the robes immediately clawed its way out of them. It had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scary-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face- no child alive had ever had a face like that- flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.

"It is ready, My Lord," said Snape to the thing.

"Now, Severus," said a high, cold voice. The thing raised its thin arms and put them around Snape's neck. Snape lifted it as if nothing about the whole situation were out of the ordinary. Indeed, Snape looked calmer and more at ease than he often looked during an ordinary Defense lesson. There were certainly no signs of the distress and agitation he'd shown when Dumbledore had told him that the plan, all along, had been for Harry to die.

Snape lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface.

Harry's scar burned almost past endurance, but still he could hear Snape's voice.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!" A fine trickle of dust appeared out of nowhere and fell softly into the cauldron. Harry didn't like to think from whence Snape and Voldemort had retrieved that dust. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.

Next, Snape produced a shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. "Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your lord!" He tucked his wand away and stretched his left arm over the cauldron. With his right hand, he swung the dagger upward and sliced a long chunk of flesh from his forearm.

Harry had never seen so much blood. He thought for a moment that Snape must faint from the pain, must bleed to death before him, and that he, Harry, would be alone with Voldemort. He would not submit to the killing curse after all, he decided, and he began to struggle against his bonds.

Snape, though, seemed unperturbed by the blood streaming from his arm. He swept toward Harry with the dagger in his hand. Harry writhed against the ropes, but to no avail. His blood was soon mixing with Snape's own, though Snape had not cut Harry so deeply as he had cut himself.

"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken. You will resurrect your foe."

The potion had turned red with the addition of Snape's flesh; now, as Snape poured Harry's blood into the cauldron, the liquid was suddenly a blinding white.

Snape casually bound his arm with a wordless spell as the cauldron continued to simmer. It sent its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness.

Nothing happened for so long that Harry began to think that nothing _would_ happen. Perhaps Snape's flesh had not worked because he was not truly Voldemort's servant? Perhaps Harry's blood had not worked because it had not truly been forcibly taken? But the potion had changed color with each addition…

Then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Harry.

And then the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rose slowly from inside the cauldron.

"Robe me," said the high, cold, voice from behind the steam. Harry could only assume that Snape obeyed. "You have done well, Severus. You are, indeed, my most loyal servant."

The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry. "Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."

Snape didn't move. He was waiting.

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still titled to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes and wanted it to happen now, quickly, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear-

He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: The resurrection sequence is adapted from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire . The last four paragraphs are from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, slightly modified.


	80. Harry and the Godson

He lay facedown, listening to silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.

A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

Almost as soon as he reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he was able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore.

Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him: the small soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful.

For the first time, he wished he were clothed.

Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and pulled them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. They were also trimmed with red: robes for Gryffindor, although he most certainly was not at school.

He turned slowly on the spot. He was the only person there, except for-

He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

"You cannot help."

He spun around. A boy was walking toward him. The boy looked to be about Harry's age, and he wore Hogwarts robes just like Harry's. The boy's robes, though, were trimmed with yellow where Harry's were trimmed with red. A Hufflepuff, then, and a prefect to boot. But Harry didn't remember ever having seen the boy in the castle corridors, and he knew that he would have remembered. The boy's hair was bright turquoise.

"Is that…?" he didn't know quite how to phrase the question. "Did it work?"

The boy beamed at Harry. The expression had a familiar echo, but Harry couldn't say why. "Yes, it worked. The last Horcrux is gone."

"Am I dead?"

"That's for you to decide."

"Are _you_ dead?" It was a rude question, but something ephemeral about the boy demanded that Harry ask it.

"Like you, I'm not precisely dead." The boy didn't seem to care to elaborate further. There was a teasing in the boy's not-quite answer that reminded Harry powerfully of another time he had nearly died at Voldemort's hand. He'd been in the hospital wing under Madam Pomfrey's care, and Tonks had refused to tell him how to get into the Hufflepuff common room to see Cedric.

_"I wouldn't even know how to get in. I know the entrance is down by the kitchens, but it would be almost impossible to sneak in without the password."_

_"Especially as Hufflepuffs don't use a password."_

_"What do they use?" asked Harry keenly._

_Tonks tried to smile. "House secret," she said._

Harry knew, then, who this must be. The fluorescent hair. The Hufflepuff robes. The smile he'd seen before. "Lupin and Tonks. They're your parents?"

"Yes." The boy extended his hand for Harry to shake and Harry grasped it. The hand felt warm and solid and not unlike the other hands Harry had shaken. "My name is Teddy Lupin. You would have been my godfather."

Harry stared at Teddy, dumbfounded. Teddy put his hand on Harry's shoulder- the way Lupin did when they were about to have a difficult conversation-and led Harry to a bench beside the train tracks.

"We're in King's Cross Station!" Harry realized.

"Yes," confirmed Teddy. "I was told that that was probably what you would create. You've been here before, but I don't imagine you have any way of remembering that now."

"I was here before?" Harry glanced around, dumbfounded. "That was when your dad- changed things?"

"That's right. They said you had a fine mind."

"Who's _they_ ?"

Teddy shook his head. Harry wasn't particularly disappointed; somehow, he hadn't expected an answer. There were many more questions to be asked, though.

"Would I have been a good godfather to you?" he wondered. He supposed that Sirius would be the godfather now. That made sense; Sirius was an adult, and he was Tonks' cousin as well as Lupin's oldest friend. Harry felt an uncomfortable twinge of jealousy. Teddy would always know that his godfather loved him and would do anything to protect him. Sirius wouldn't need to fumble about trying to do the right thing for Teddy; he would grow as a godfather while Teddy grew as a person.

Harry wanted that for Teddy. He wanted it for Sirius, too.

He was still jealous.

The jealousy evaporated when Teddy beamed at him again. "You would have been a wonderful godfather. It wouldn't have been easy, you know, at first. With my parents dead, I would have lived with my grandmother-"

"Tonks died too?" Harry was struck with an unexpected pang of grief even though he knew that Tonks was perfectly fine. She was probably spending Easter with her parents and she would never need to face Voldemort in battle.

"Yes. My parents would have decided that it was more important for me to grow up in a world without Voldemort than it was for me to grow up with them. They would have trusted my grandmother. Dad actually would have asked Mum to stay with me, but he wouldn't have believed she really would. She would have come to fight. They would have died within minutes of each other at the Battle of Hogwarts. You would have seen them lying dead on your way to meet Voldemort the way you did today."

The pang of grief grew even more sickening. Harry was glad that he hadn't had to do any of that.

"You would have struggled," Teddy continued casually, as if he hadn't noticed Harry's reaction. "You would have spent your teenage years as a soldier. You wouldn't have gone back to Hogwarts for your seventh year. You would have been forced to compete in the Triwizard Tournament-"

"And Cedric would have died," Harry put in, wanting to sound like he knew something about something in this strange world.

"Yes," said Teddy. "Then the Ministry would have denied Voldemort's return."

"And Umbridge would have tortured me with a blood quill and Sirius would have died."

"You would have been the leader of the resistance after Dumbledore's death. Undesirable Number One. You would have spent most of a year hiding in the woods, looking for Horcruxes, waiting for the day you had to die to protect everyone else. And then all of a sudden it would have been over. You would have been godfather to an orphaned baby being raised by a grandmother who'd lost everyone else she'd ever loved. My grandmother would have been a bit intimidating."

Harry could believe it. Andromeda was a bit intimidating when she wasn't trying to protect a baby and when Sirius was right there casting some sort of familial shield charm around Harry. "We would have worked together though? For you?"

"You would have." Teddy smiled again. "You would have learned to trust each other, to be family to each other because you both would have been family to me. You would have treated me like your own son, even- especially- after you had your own sons."

"My own sons?" The thought made Harry dizzy.

"You and your wife would have had two boys and then a girl, but there always would have been room for me at the table. I would have been round for dinner about four times a week, and your children still would have said I ought to move in. The boys would have offered to share a room, and you would have said that only would have happened if you wanted the house demolished. They would have been very different, your sons. You and your wife would have had your hands full."

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me my wife's name."

"No. You're a different person now to the person you would have been. You haven't gone through the things you would have gone through."

Harry thought then of the beautiful lagoon in Florida, and all of a sudden brilliantly green plants appeared around them. Clear water replaced the train tracks.

"Lupin-Remus- your dad- talked to me about that last summer," Harry told Teddy. "He said he worried that he took something from me by changing the past. That he deprived me of the experiences that would have made me the man I was meant to be. I told him I'd rather be a lesser man and have Sirius and Cedric be alive. I told him I don't like it when people say that you have to go through adversity to become a good person. That's like saying Ron and Hermione can't be good people because their parents love them. And Ron and Hermione, they're the best people."

"Then you wish to go back to them."

"Of course I want to go back to them! Why wouldn't I?"

"You will return to a world that is, perhaps, less painful than the world you would have been living in were it not for my father. It will not be a world free of pain. You will always face loss and challenges and sadness."

"But I'll face them with Ron and Hermione and Sirius and- and one of these days, you."

Teddy shook his head. "No. This will be the only time you meet me."

"But… Tonks, she said she was going to forgive Lupin. She said she wanted to marry him when he got out of Azkaban. He is going to get out of Azkaban, isn't he? It wouldn't be fair if he just died there, not after everything…"

"Harry, are you under the impression that life is fair?"

"No." Harry slouched back against the bench. It felt more like one of the benches in the real King's Cross Station again.

"Precisely," said Teddy, now sounding very like Remus. "In any event, magic comes with a cost." He gestured toward the flayed, naked child which still lay gasping for breath on the floor. "It's easier to see with dark magic. When you use magic to commit murder, you rip your soul. In his quest for immortality, Voldemort found a fate far worse than death. I believe you know that the blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death-"

"But you will have a cursed life from the moment the blood touches your lips," Harry completed. He had learned that lesson from the centaur called Firenze in his first year at Hogwarts. "But Lupin-Remus- he didn't do any dark magic. He put the Imperius Curse on us in class, but that was only to teach us. He never hurt us. He wanted to stop us being hurt."

"All magic has a cost," Teddy repeated patiently. He might have been sitting in the Defense classroom telling Harry and Cedric about a new dueling spell. "The cost of transfiguring a matchstick into a needle is so small that you cannot even perceive it, not if you did nothing but transfigure matchsticks every hour of your life for one hundred years. What Remus Lupin did was much, much more than even the greatest wizards do. There are things magic cannot do. It cannot create food where there is none, nor create true love, nor raise the dead."

"What he did came close to raising the dead."

"There is often an irony to very old, very powerful magic. He asked to go back for me, you know. He was willing to die for me, but he wanted to live for me. To know me."

Teddy waved his hand, and Harry saw Remus Lupin looking older and more ragged than Harry had ever known him to be, even on the morning after a full moon. This Remus Lupin was bleeding and battleworn, and he was pleading with a woman Harry couldn't quite see.

_"If you won't let me move on, why not send me back? Give you enough time to sort out your bureaucratic errors. There must be corpses stacked like cordwood at Hogwarts. With Harry alive, who would notice one old werewolf standing up and going home to his son?"_

_"Dozens of people," she said. "I'd have to send you back to before you died, and you'd simply fall to Dolohov again."_

_"So send me back to before I duel him," snapped Remus. "Send me back five hours and I'll practice. Or send me back five months so I can manage not to walk out on my pregnant wife. Or send me back five years, and maybe I'll keep Voldemort from rising at all. Or-"_

The scene vanished.

So too did the remnants of the lagoon.

The train station was a train station again.

"He wanted to come home to me," Teddy concluded. "Instead he forged a world in which I can never exist. He can't replicate the circumstances that would have led to my creation. Not even if he marries my mother. Not even if he has children with her. There is too much chance involved in such a thing. Any children they have will not be less worthy of life than I, but they will not be me."

"Are you angry?" Harry asked, suddenly wondering if Teddy was here to punish him. Remus' actions had made Harry's life much better, but they had kept Teddy from having a life at all. Harry's parents had died for him; Teddy's parents had died for him. They had been equal, once, and now they were not.

"When I was orphaned, my father hoped that I would understand that he died to make a better world for me. And I would have understood. When he realizes for certain what he has done, he will hope that I understand that he was, again, trying to make a better world for me. And he will be right. I understand."

"He doesn't know he'll never see you again?"

"He is aware of the possibility. But he has hope. And when he loses that hope, you will know what to say to him."

Harry wasn't looking forward to it, but it was one more reason he needed to get back to his life. "I will. How do I get back there? Do I catch a train?"

"Before you make your final decision, there's someone waiting to see you."

Teddy led Harry onto a train, and just as quickly off of it. Then Teddy was gone without explanation and Harry was standing in a warm, welcoming room. The chairs and couches were soft; sunlight seemed to stream through every window. Racing brooms leaned in one corner and the walls were covered with all sorts of interesting photographs.

In the middle of the room stood a man with messy black hair and a woman with bright green eyes.

For the first time since he'd been fifteen months old, Harry Potter ran into the outstretched arms of his parents.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: The paragraphs prior to Teddy's appearance are from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, slightly modified.


	81. Harry and the Parents

When he thought about it later, Harry was overwhelmed by how instinctively and completely he could feel that the man and woman embracing him were his parents. He could feel it in the way James' hand cupped the back of his head. He could feel it in the way Lily stood so close that it would have felt like hovering if she had been anyone else.

Somehow it didn't matter that they were only a few years older than he was- six years, to be exact. In his mind, he had unconsciously begun to imagine them as having aged the way Sirius and Lupin had even though he knew perfectly well that they would never grow old. But when he saw his parents, his imaginings vanished as if he had always known that they were somehow both right and wrong.

They told him how much they loved him a thousand times in a thousand ways. He didn't need to hear it. He had already known. But it was nice all the same.

"Harry," said James after what might have been a minute or an hour or a day. "Your journey is over."

The bliss that had wrapped itself around Harry since Teddy had deposited him in the odd, cozy room evaporated. Teddy had told him that he could return to his life if he liked, and he thought he'd made it abundantly clear that that was exactly what he wanted. He needed to win a Quidditch Cup with Ron as his teammate. He needed to be there to congratulate Hermione when she got an O on every single OWL. He definitely needed to see the grand opening of the twins' joke shop, which he was certain was going to exceed even Zonko's wildest expectations.

"James!" Lily gave her husband a playfully exasperated glare before returning the whole of her attention to Harry. "He doesn't mean that your mortal life is over. You'll be back with Ron and Hermione and Sirius just as soon as you want to be."

James stiffened slightly, not quite wanting to admit his error. "Of course I didn't mean that that journey was over."

"Your father really was a great leader," said Lily casually. "He inspired incredible loyalty wherever he went. He'd give a motivational speech to his Quidditch team and they'd want to fly through a wall for him. He'd stand up and talk at an Order meeting, and we'd all believe that we could win the war, no matter how dark our private thoughts might have been before he opened his mouth. You've met his friends. You know how much they revere him even now. So it really is a shame that the first time you've been able to see him in fifteen years, he decides to tell you that _your journey is over_ while you're in the in-between."

"What I meant to say, Harry, is that the path you've been on since the day your mother and I died has come to an end. You… in a way, Harry Potter did die that day in Godric's Hollow. Instead you became the Boy Who Lived. It's why you were raised by your mother's… family instead of by any number of people who would have loved you and liked you for the boy you were and the young man you've become. It's why you were asked to face Voldemort tonight. But Voldemort is gone now."

"So I've finally done the thing people always said I did anyway?" asked Harry. He wasn't entirely sure that very much would change. Only a very few people would know that anything out of the ordinary had occurred during the Easter holiday. Strangers would still stare at the scar on his forehead; his friends would still be his friends; former Death Eaters and their children would still harbor an instinctive dislike for him.

"Yes," agreed James. "And while that may not matter very much to other people, it should certainly matter very much to you. When you look in a mirror and notice how much you resemble me- you're welcome, by the way- feel free to forget about it. You can stop trying to live up to whatever idealized version of your forever young, tragically martyred parents may have been haunting you ever since your eleventh birthday."

Harry had waited a lifetime to hear his father's voice and now he wasn't at all certain that he liked what James was saying. "Why shouldn't I be brave and try to protect people?"

"Those are perfectly fine impulses," said Lily. "But you can have them and just be Harry. _My Harry_ . Not a child of prophecy, not an accidental Horcrux, not someone who has to live with relatives who treat him poorly because of who his mother happened to be. Just Harry."

 _Just Harry._ He'd thought of himself that way, mostly, and been informed that this made him modest and humble rather than realistic.

"What we're saying," Lily continued, "is be whoever you want to be. Don't let Voldemort define you one little bit for the rest of your life. Choose your own path. When we gave our lives for you, we certainly did not want you to be chained to some sort of destiny."

"We wanted you to be free to lie on a beach and live off the proceeds of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment for the rest of your life," said James.

"Sleekeazy's Hair…" Harry remembered that Hermione had used it on the night she'd attended the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum, but he didn't think he'd ever heard of it again.

"That is where the family fortune comes from. Your grandfather- Fleamont Potter- quadrupled the family's wealth by inventing Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and selling the company at a vast profit when he retired. Of course, the irony of it was that the only hair it didn't improve was his own." James grinned and raked his fingers through his messy hair. "But I'm sure you've realized that our hair is perfect the way it is."

Harry tried to grin back but found that he couldn't manage it. He couldn't joke about hair potion and living on a beach when his parents had died so that he might live. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for my life."

James and Lily made almost identical dismissive gestures. "It was the easiest thing we ever did," said Lily. "He stood there and told me over and over to get out of the way, and I knew that I never would, not if he kept asking me for a year."

"He didn't give me a choice," said James. "But I'd known since before you were born that I would give my life for you and your mother, so I didn't need a choice."

Harry swallowed hard. He was never going to be able to repay them, and that somehow bothered him even when they told him that they had never meant for him to be in their debt. "Is there- er, well Teddy gave me a message for Lupin. Do you have any messages for people who are still alive?"

"No," said Lily quickly.

"Didn't we just tell you to live your own life and not the life that you somehow think would makes us proud?" continued James.

"All you ever had to do to make us proud was wake up in the morning and come home at night."

"Not that we underestimate what it must have taken to you to walk out into the forest with Snape and submit to Avada Kedavra."

Harry thought again of the way Snape had lashed him to the tree, of his brief flash of fear that Snape wasn't Dumbledore's man after all. "Were you and Snape really friends?" he asked Lily.

She sighed, and he felt guilty all over again. He had never wanted to make his mother sigh. "It's complicated with Sev. You've lived long enough, Harry, to know that people aren't always simple and easy. Yes, we were friends. I loved so very much about him. His intelligence. His creativity. His sense of humor. His life was very difficult, so I don't blame him entirely for some of the choices he made. But he did make those choices and it did get to the point that we were no longer compatible and we were no longer friends. Even now, I don't condone his treatment of you, and believe me, if I had been there, I would have put a stop to it. And yet I admire what he's done. So I'd just as soon that he, like you, has an opportunity to live a life that isn't dominated by Voldemort. I hope that he makes the most of that freedom."

"Don't take your mother's compassion as a sign that we aren't furious about what's happened to you," added James. "Snape and Dumbledore and your aunt and uncle have all failed you in unacceptable ways, and there have even been moments where I would like to have had a word with Remus and Sirius. But we don't want to talk about any of them. We have _you_ , we have this moment with _you_ , and we want to talk about _you_ ."

"How much do you see of what goes on in… the other place?" Harry wasn't sure what to call the world where he lived. But his parents seemed to know not only everything about him but everything about everyone.

Lily ran her hand over his shoulders. "We knew everything about you as soon as you came here. Usually, we can only sense you when you nearly die. Chasing the Philosopher's Stone all by yourself, fighting a basilisk, that sort of thing."

"We always know when it's Halloween because Sirius and Remus call out to us," said James quietly. "I know we said we weren't going to do this, but tell Padfoot to throw a party and enjoy himself next Halloween. Tell Moony and Padfoot to take care of each other until I see them again."

"Already did that," said Harry, thinking of his last words to Sirius. He was so pleased to find that he had anticipated James' wishes before James had had a chance to voice them that he almost missed the concerned way that Lily nudged James.

"I know," said James to Lily. "But this had happened before, and he's always come out of it."

"What?" demanded Harry. There were many times he had been sorry not to have parents. But none of those times had involved his parents trying to talk over his head as if he wasn't old enough to understand.

James flinched. "Remus is much too close to the veil right now."

Harry knew instinctively that the veil was what separated his world from his parents' world. "Because he had to transform without any help in Azkaban." It had been a worry at the back of Harry's mind ever since the Aurors had arrested Lupin. "Is he going to die?"

"If I knew that, I couldn't tell you."

Harry opened his mouth to ask for a more satisfactory answer, but it seemed that his time in the in-between had run its course. The world was dissolving around him.

"We love you," Lily shouted.

"We're waiting for you, but do not be in any rush!" James added.

He felt their arms encircling him once more, comforting him, remaining after they should have faded.

Then he was opening his eyes on the forest floor.

_**To be continued.** _


	82. Harry and the End

Harry blinked. He couldn't see well; it was dark but for the lingering light of the flames beneath the massive cauldron, and he had somehow lost his glasses. He hadn't needed the glasses in the in-between with Teddy and his parents.

He needed them here.

That perpetual inconvenience, more than anything else, was what convinced him that he was home. Or, if not home, at least in Albania with his professor and the man who had murdered his parents.

The ropes that had bound him to the tree seemed to have vanished; he was now lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.

"Take his body, Severus," said the cold, high voice Harry knew belonged to Voldemort. "We will need to preserve it. We will show all who need to see that the Boy Who Lived lives no longer."

"Yes, my lord," said Snape. Harry sensed more than saw Snape drawing nearer. He felt Snape's hand on the back of his neck and knew that he must remain still, must pretend to be dead. It went against his every instinct; for most of five years, he had found himself in conflict with Snape. Snape had glared at him with utmost loathing the first time they'd seen one another and had never missed an opportunity to humiliate Harry ever since. Not on the first day of class when he'd asked Harry questions no Muggle-raised child could possibly have been expected to answer. Not that very term when he'd read the Daily Prophet article about Sirius to the class.

 _We were friends,_ Lily had said. _I loved so very much about him. His intelligence. His creativity. His sense of humor._

Harry heard on a regular basis that he had his mother's eyes. Now he tried with all his might to see through them, to be sure that he was doing the right thing by not punching Snape in his overlarge nose and fleeing…

"I underestimated you, Severus," said Voldemort. His tone wasn't precisely casual; Harry doubted that Voldemort ever did anything casually. Still, Harry sensed a layer of contentment in Voldemort that he somehow knew was unusual.

"Many people underestimate me, my lord."

There was that horrible, high laugh once more. "Including Albus Dumbledore."

"Including Albus Dumbledore." Snape's long fingers seized the back of Harry's robe and hauled him upright. Harry let himself continue to slump as if dead.

"You truly have no feeling for the boy, have you?"

"If the boy were alive, he would be the first to tell you that my only feelings for him were hate and loathing. He was as arrogant and insufferable as his father." Harry could feel that Snape's wand was soft in his right hand. He was ready to strike, Harry realized- and Harry knew how quickly Snape could strike.

"But his mother," said Voldemort. "You'd have done anything for _Lily_ ."

"For Lily," Snape repeated, and his wand flashed a lightening bolt. " _Avada Kedavra_ ."

And Voldemort fell down dead with Lily's name ringing in his ears.

* * *

Snape paused only for a moment before shaking Harry rather roughly. "Cease playing dead. You look more ridiculous than usual."

Harry straightened up and enjoyed the feeling of the forest floor beneath his trainers. Snape, meanwhile, let go of him and knelt by Voldemort's side. "Is he dead?" Harry asked.

He whirled about and directed his familiar glower. "Tell me, Potter, what does _Avada Kedavra_ do?"

"It doesn't seem to do much of anything to me," said Harry.

For a fraction of a second, Harry thought that Snape might kill him, too, and leave him dead beside Voldemort.

For a fraction of a second, Harry also thought that Snape might laugh, and that Harry might die of shock if he saw such a thing.

What happened was even stranger. "I suppose it was a reasonable question coming from you," said Snape. "Yes, Harry, he's dead."

What was more difficult to believe? That Snape had acknowledged that Harry's initial question had been reasonable even if his followup had been deliberately cheeky? Or that Snape had just called him _Harry_ ?

Harry drew closer and squinted at the mess on the ground. The frail, thin body was undeniably lifeless. It was decaying already, as if it had lain forgotten on the forest floor for months. Snape conjured a rubbish bin from the air and casually levitated the corpse inside.

 _His sense of humor,_ Lily had said. Harry supposed that he could see it.

Snape cast a wordless spell that made the giant cauldron retreat to its hiding place in what Harry thought must be some sort of cabin. Next he extinguished the flames. They were now surrounded by a thick, velvet darkness broken only by the light of Snape's wand.

"Cast _lumos_ ," Snape ordered Harry. "I trust that Professor Flitwick managed to drum that spell into your skull at some point in the last five years?"

"I don't have my wand," Harry. "Nor my glasses- when the spell hit me-"

With a wordless, dismissive flick of his wrist, Snape summoned both Harry's wand and his glasses. Harry wasn't certain which he was more relieved to have back in his hands. He wasted no time in lighting his wand and placing the glasses on his face.

"What now?" Harry asked.

"We return to our Portkey. We will bring the body."

"But the cauldron and everything else?"

"The cottage is invisible to most eyes. I shall return at a later date. I imagine that the Headmaster will wish to inspect it for himself. But for now, I must return you to the school before you find a way to cause more trouble."

Harry didn't think he had caused any trouble lately, but he was anxious to return to school and, especially, Sirius. So he hurried along beside Snape as they retraced their steps through the forest clearing to the place where the Portkey had first deposited them.

As if it had only just occurred to him that perhaps he should do so, Snape asked whether Harry was all right.

"Yeah," said Harry. "I think so." He couldn't quite describe exactly how he felt. He only knew that he felt ordinary, and yet not. He didn't know whether his body had been affected at all; he did know that his mind was full. "How long was I on the ground after the curse hit me and before he told you to take my body?"

"A second or two. No more." Snape turned sharply toward him. "I suppose you're going to tell me that it seemed like more to you? That you… experienced something, in the nature of what Lupin described?"

Lupin had obviously been right about almost everything, and since they had all benefitted Harry didn't entirely understand why Snape was so upset about it. "My mum said that she hopes you make the most of the freedom to live a life that isn't dominated by Voldemort."

 _"Do not say his name!"_ Snape's features contorted in rage. _"And do not tell stories about people you know nothing about!"_ Snape waved his wand, and Dumbledore's plastic toy boat flew into his hand. He waved his wand once more, murmuring an enchantment under his breath, before holding the boat out so that Harry could touch it.

Then the three of them- Snape and Harry and the remains of what had once been Lord Voldemort- landed on the floor of Dumbledore's office.

* * *

Harry hit the floor hard. His first thought was that he didn't mind; if he had somehow been destined to fall while traveling by Portkey today, he was glad that it happened while he was in Dumbledore's office and not while he was in the forest.

He didn't have time for a second thought before Sirius pulled him from the floor and into a hard embrace. Sirius was shaking dreadfully and murmuring a string of expletives and endearments in Harry's ear.

Harry wanted to say that everything was all right- because everything really, truly was all right, perhaps for the first time in his life- but he found that he didn't have the words. He supposed it didn't matter. Sirius wouldn't have heard him anyway.

Sirius kept one hand clenched firmly around Harry's wrist as he approached the bin and inspected its contents. "Did you watch him die?" he asked Harry.

"Yes. It was Avada Kedavra."

"Can't really see it on his face," Sirius mused as if he were looking at a preserved artifact in the Quidditch Museum. "Usually with Avada Kedavra, you get a frozen surprised expression. Even if you knew it was coming. Even with your mum, and if anyone ever knew it was coming-"

"Shut your mouth, Black!" Snape had his wand in his hand and he looked far angrier than he had ever looked in Voldemort's presence. "Your godson told you what he saw."

"I don't doubt him," said Sirius. He didn't let go of Harry's wrist. He didn't reach for his wand. "He hit you with the curse, Harry?"

Harry nodded. "The Horcrux is gone."

"Perhaps Harry and Severus should begin the story at the beginning," said Dumbledore gently.

It didn't seem that there was much of a story when Dumbledore put it that way. They'd taken the Portkey to Albania. Snape had brewed the potion and resurrected Voldemort. Voldemort had tried to kill Harry. For the second time, it hadn't worked. Snape had killed Voldemort. They had returned.

"Harry- forgive me, but I must ask- did you experience anything after the curse hit you and before Professor Snape eliminate Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes," said Harry shortly. He wasn't ready to talk about his parents. He certainly couldn't talk about Teddy. "It was- it was a bit like what Lupin said. I was in a place that looked like King's Cross Station, and someone asked whether I was ready to move on, and I said I wasn't, and then I was back in the forest like nothing had happened."

Dumbledore looked like he was about to ask more questions, but Sirius interrupted. "If you want further details, Dumbledore, it doesn't have to be now. He's had a long day. Let him have a sleep."

Harry's body was vibrating with a strange energy. He couldn't remember a time he'd felt less like sleeping, but he was grateful for Sirius' interruption. "Yeah, let's go home," he said to Sirius.

The house in Hogsmeade had never really felt like home, but suddenly it did. He and Sirius would be there, and Voldemort would not.

"I shall want to speak to you when classes resume," Dumbledore told Harry. Harry nodded.

Sirius looked over his shoulder at Snape as they left. "Congratulations," he told Snape. "Must have been an amazing bit of Occulmency."

Snape, looking stunned, gave a curt nod as Dumbledore called his wishes for pleasant dreams.

* * *

The door closed behind Harry and Sirius. They scrambled down the revolving staircase, which didn't seem to revolve quite quickly enough.

"I'm grateful to Severus Snape for your life," said Sirius as they reached the corridor and strode quickly toward the front door of the castle. "But I'll never forgive him for passing along that prophecy about you."

"People aren't always simple and easy," said Harry, trying out Lily's words to see how they felt in his mouth. They felt true. He liked them.

"No." Sirius had a faraway look in his eyes. Harry didn't like it. He wanted Sirius to be here with him.

"Can I ask a question?"

"Always." Sirius' penetrating gaze was on Harry again.

"Did my family's money really come from hair potion?"

Sirius barked out a laugh. Whatever he might have expected Harry to ask, it hadn't had anything to do with hair tonic. "Yes. You didn't know that?"

Harry shook his head.

"Of course, the irony of it is that it wouldn't work on your hair."

"My hair is perfect the way it is," said Harry, trying out James' words now.

Sirius stopped abruptly and gripped Harry by the shoulders. "Your dad… your dad used to say that when I teased him about Sleekeazy's."

"I know," said Harry, even though he hadn't exactly known.

"I know that you didn't tell Dumbledore everything you saw, and you needn't tell me either, if it's not my business but-"

"I saw my mum and dad," said Harry before Sirius could ask. "Dad says you should throw a party and and enjoy yourself next Halloween."

To Harry's horror, Sirius' eyes filled with tears. Sirius had barely let go of Harry since Harry had landed in Dumbledore's office, and now his hands tightened on Harry's shoulders so that Harry could not avoid seeing the fresh pain on his face. "That was meant to be a happy thing," said Harry awkwardly.

"I know that." Sirius didn't sound as if he knew it at all. "Did James say anything else?"

"To take care of Lupin."

"And to take care of you?" Sirius' voice broke.

"I reckon that was implied."

"Tomorrow- there's nothing stopping us now- tomorrow I'll get the paperwork to assert guardianship formally. Assuming that's what you want."

"It is," said Harry, who couldn't think of anything better.

They had reached the house that was suddenly a home. Harry laughed when the door opened to reveal boxes upon boxes of Sticky Trainers, Fanged Flyers, Box O'Rockets, and Electric Shock Shakes. Had it only been that evening when Sirius and Mrs. Weasley had argued about Sirius' silent backing of the twins' business? It seemed unimportant now.

"Watch your step," said Sirius. "Tonks was here this afternoon and I thought she was going to break every love potion in the place. It would have been awkward on several levels." Harry could tell that Sirius was forcing a lightness he didn't feel as he moved from room to room, looking for signs of traps or intruders. He found nothing. Soon they were both in Harry's bedroom staring at each other. Harry had no idea how to begin to say goodnight. He was both exhausted and vibrating with nervous energy.

"I know that I haven't always been the best godfather to you," said Sirius at last.

"That isn't true!" Harry protested.

"It is. I'll try to do better when I'm your formal guardian, but I can't promise you anything. Those years I missed with you were years I missed learning things I might never learn now."

Harry remembered the painful jealousy he'd felt in the in-between when he'd talked to Teddy about godfathers. "I reckon that when Tonks and Lupin have a baby, you'll be the godfather."

"It's been discussed." Of course it had.

"That makes me jealous. Not because you'll do everything right with your next godchild, although you probably will, but because he or she will always know you, and I didn't. These last few years- having you around- it's been-"

He didn't know what else to say. He didn't know whether he should have said anything at all. He didn't think he would have said anything if his body hadn't been quite so tired and his brain hadn't been spinning quite so fast.

Sirius sank down onto Harry's bed, which was one of the few surfaces in the house that wasn't covered with the Weasley twins' products. "If you don't want me to be the godfather, I won't."

"What?" Harry hadn't expected that.

"There is nothing in the world that's more important to me than you. Nothing. If you don't want to share, you don't have to share."

"But there's no one in the world Lupin trusts anything like as much as you, and you're Tonks' cousin, too."

"Tonks' crazy friends can fight it out to decide who gets to be godmother. If they want a godfather as well, I'm sure Kingsley would be honored. Or Mad-Eye. Or perhaps- you."

Harry shook his head as he realized that he'd never wanted Sirius all to himself at all. He'd only wanted to hear that he could have had him if he'd needed him. "It should be you. You can be godfather enough for the both of us."

"We don't even know whether there's ever going to be a child." Sirius looked almost amused. "We can discuss it when that looks more like a possibility."

"You said Tonks has friends who would be the baby's godmother?"

"You haven't met Tulip and Penny? I think you'd like them."

Whether he would like Tonks' friends wasn't foremost on Harry's mind at the moment. "Did I have a godmother?" No one had ever mentioned one, but then no one had mentioned Sirius for the first thirteen years of Harry's life.

"No. The ceremony was just the four of us in the church. Your parents were already mostly in hiding."

"Didn't my mum have friends? Lupin said she did."

"Certainly she did. She was very popular. But you try to limit attendance at secret ceremonies in the middle of the war." Sirius tucked his long hair behind his ear. "We never talked about this, but I think it might have made her sad to have a godmother for you if that godmother couldn't be your Aunt Petunia. They were almost completely estranged by the time your mum died, but they were very close when they were younger and sometimes it's difficult to let go of that. My cousin Andromeda loves Tonks more than anyone else in the world. Naturally. She knows that Bellatrix Lestrange would have murdered Tonks in about a second if she'd had half a chance. She's not at all angry with me for killing Bella first."

"I know," said Harry. "I read the article about your penetrating grey eyes and abundant dark hair."

"I put up with that idiocy because I thought it would help Remus and you know it."

Harry shrugged.

"Anna was honest in that article. She doesn't mourn who Bella was. She mourns who Bella could have been. It's a bit less dramatic with your mum, but I think a part of her always wished that Petunia had been willing to accept her."

"Aunt Petunia is going to be thrilled when she finds out that I won't be visiting her anymore."

"Well, she's not happier about that than I am." Sirius grinned at Harry.

Harry smiled back tiredly. "What would you have done if it had been you?"

"If what had been me?"

"If someone told you that you had to take in your brother's child after he died?"

"I like to think I would have done better than Petunia did." Sirius stiffened. "I need to get whatever's left of Regulus' body out of that lake. Now that we know there isn't going to be a second Voldemort war, perhaps we can lay some of the ghosts of the last one to rest."

That sounded wonderful to Harry. "I want to help. All summer, that's what I want to do. It'll take a while to clear the Inferi. We should probably get rid of them, anyway, even if we don't have to do it to find Regulus. We can let the people whose bodies turned into Inferi rest, too, even if we don't know who they were."

"Very well," said Sirius. "That's our plan for the summer. In the meantime, you need some rest."

Harry was bone-weary, but he knew that sleep was out of the question. His mind was too full of Lily and James and Teddy and Lupin and Sirius and Regulus and Snape and Voldemort. Sometimes when he blinked, he saw the faces of his parents beaming at him as if he were the most wonderful thing they had ever seen. Sometimes when he blinked, he saw Voldemort's thin form stepping out of the cauldron, ready to murder Harry on his way to ruling the wizarding world once more.

"Everything all right physically?" asked Sirius, who was watching Harry closely. "Does anything hurt? Are you hungry?"

The meal he'd eaten at the Weasleys' was somehow still lodged in his stomach, and a quick scan of his body revealed that nothing hurt. "I'm fine."

Sirius waved his wand and summoned a book of crossword puzzles. "Try this."

Harry knew that Sirius used crossword puzzles to relax his mind when he couldn't sleep, but Harry couldn't imagine that working for him. He wouldn't know any of the answers and staring at the blank grid wouldn't do anything to stop the images arising before his eyes. Voldemort raising his wand. Lily and James waiting to embrace him.

"No?" asked Sirius, even though Harry hadn't said anything. "Then there's only one option left."

"What's that?"

"You'll have to catch up on your studying. You didn't prepare for the OWLs properly because you thought that you might die. Now you find yourself alive, and the OWLs don't care whether you defeated the Dark Lord. Get into bed, and I'll join you in a moment."

Harry did as he was told, primarily because he was curious about what Sirius meant to do. There was no way that Sirius really expected him to study in bed.

* * *

It turned out that Sirius really expected Harry to study in bed.

"I liked Transfiguration best when I was your age," said Sirius as he settled into a chair in the corner of Harry's bedroom. "But I don't recall precisely what was on the OWL and I don't know how much they've changed the curriculum in the last twenty years. But Astronomy hasn't changed much, and as _that_ was drilled into me before I ever started at Hogwarts, I've never forgotten it. We've talked too much about my family tonight already, so I don't think we'll revise about the stars. That leaves the moons." His grin was almost gloating and his eyes glittered in the dark. "What's a moon, Harry?"

"Something that naturally orbits a planet or an asteroid." Even first years who weren't very good at Astronomy knew that.

"How many moons does Mercury have?"

"None."

"Venus?"

"None."

"Earth?"

"One."

"Mars?"

"Two."

"What are they called, and why?"

"Phobos and Deimos. Mars is named after the god of war, so Phobos means fear and Deimos means dread." Harry wasn't at all sure that this was taking his mind off of the day's experiences.

"What's unusual about Phobos' orbit?"

"It orbits Mars more closely than any other moon orbits any other planet, and the orbit spirals inward so that eventually it will crash into Mars."

"How many moons does Jupiter have?"

Harry flinched. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn were impossible to keep straight, and no sane person would feel the need to memorize them anyway. "Fifty-six named moons."

"Name them."

"Io. Europa. Callisto. Ganymede. Dia. Elara. Hegemone. Kore. Atlas-"

"Atlas belongs to Saturn."

"I could start making things up and you would never know."

"Ah, but I would."

"Fine, Sirius. Let's hear you name all fifty-six moons." He made himself sound doubtful, but he knew as well as he knew his own name that Sirius would be able to do it. Sirius had told him more than once that the Black family had prided itself on its knowledge of astronomy.

He could feel Sirius' smirk in the darkness. "Adrastea, Aitne, Amalthea, Ananke, Aoede, Arche, Autonoe, Callirrhoe, Callisto, Carme, Carpo, Chaldene, Cyllene, Dia, Eirene, Elara, Erinome, Ersa, Euanthe, Eukelade, Eupheme, Euporie, Europa, Eurydome, Ganymede, Harpalyke, Hegemone, Helike, Hermippe, Herse, Himalia, Io, Iocaste, Isonoe, Kale, Kallichore, Kalyke, Kore, Leda, Lysithea, Megaclite, Metis, Mneme, Orthosie, Pandia, Pasiphae, Pasithee, Philophrosyne, Praxidike, Sinope, Sponde, Taygete, Thebe, Thelxinoe, Themisto, and Thyone."

The rise and fall of Sirius' voice as he recited the names with utter confidence made Harry feel confident, too. Not necessarily confident that he was going to make a decent showing on his Astronomy OWL, but confident that at least he and Sirius would make it through the rest of the night.

"Do it again."

"Adrastea, Aitne, Amalthea, Ananke, Aoede, Arche, Autonoe, Callirrhoe, Callisto, Carme, Carpo, Chaldene, Cyllene, Dia, Eirene, Elara, Erinome, Ersa, Euanthe, Eukelade, Eupheme, Euporie, Europa, Eurydome, Ganymede, Harpalyke, Hegemone, Helike, Hermippe, Herse, Himalia, Io, Iocaste, Isonoe, Kale, Kallichore, Kalyke, Kore, Leda, Lysithea, Megaclite, Metis, Mneme, Orthosie, Pandia, Pasiphae, Pasithee, Philophrosyne, Praxidike, Sinope, Sponde, Taygete, Thebe, Thelxinoe, Themisto, and Thyone."

All at once, Harry was half asleep, counting moons the way he'd heard of Muggles counting sheep.

He didn't ask Sirius to start again, but Sirius did, speaking more slowly as if reciting the world's oddest, dullest lullaby. "Adrastea, Aitne, Amalthea, Ananke, Aoede, Arche, Autonoe, Callirrhoe, Callisto, Carme, Carpo, Chaldene, Cyllene, Dia, Eirene, Elara, Erinome…"

"Sirius?"

"Go to sleep, Harry."

"Could all of those moons make a werewolf turn?"

"No one knows. I suggested once that Remus offer himself up to the Muggle astronauts for experimentation, but he said something very rude in response."

"Do you think he can survive in Azkaban? My mum said he was too close to the veil."

"Remus is strong. Much stronger than he looks. Much stronger than he acts. He's transformed without help many times, and there were many times when it looked like he wouldn't make it and he did."

That was almost exactly what James had said, but Harry wasn't certain that Sirius believed his own words any more than Harry believed them.

"Ersa," Sirius resumed softly as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Euanthe, Eukelade, Eupheme, Euporie, Europa, Eurydome, Ganymede, Harpalyke, Hegemone, Helike, Hermippe, Herse, Himalia, Io, Iocaste, Isonoe, Kale, Kallichore, Kalyke, Kore, Leda, Lysithea, Megaclite, Metis, Mneme, Orthosie, Pandia, Pasiphae, Pasithee, Philophrosyne, Praxidike, Sinope, Sponde, Taygete, Thebe, Thelxinoe…"

Harry fell asleep, and he didn't dream of Voldemort.

**To be continued.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Oh, were you going to tell me that some of those moons hadn't been discovered when Harry was in school, let alone when Sirius was in school? Well, it turns out that the wizards knew about them before Muggle science caught up. Because, magic.


	83. The Prison

He was hazy with pain. He was ravenously hungry and not in a position to do anything about it. He knew better than to ask for help and he knew better than to ask about Dora.

It was a slight relief when one day the hit wizards began gossiping casually about Bellatrix's death.

No, not casually.

They were informing Rodolphus Lestrange that his wife was dead and they knew it. They were enjoying it. Azkaban destroyed the men and women inside the cells, but it seemed to affect those charged with standing guard as well.

Rodolphus sobbed brokenly. Everyone ignored him, with the exception of Dolohov, who pointed out loudly that Bellatrix had never actually loved her husband anyway.

 _"It was Sirius Black that got her right away,"_ one hit wizard informed another. _"They were first cousins. We never should have gone to the trouble of locking the Blacks up. We should have left them alone and let them finish each other off."_

 _"Sirius will have enjoyed that,"_ whispered Peter from the cell beside Remus. _"He always hated his family. To be rid of one of the last, and by his own hand, will have been the highlight of his year."_

"You'd better hope they don't arrest him and put him back in here as your cellmate, Peter," said Remus as pleasantly as he could.

He enjoyed Peter's squeak of fear. If Sirius was out there somewhere taking pleasure in things that shouldn't strictly have given him pleasure, he wasn't alone.

For the rest of the month, nothing mattered as much as listening hard for news of Dora. It never came. He told himself that Sirius had killed Bellatrix within a day of her escape; Bellatrix hadn't had time to go after Dora.

_Avada Kedavra takes less than a second. How quickly did I die once Dolohov had an opening?_

He told himself that the death of an Auror at the hands of an Azkaban escapee would have been so significant that the hit wizards would have been sure to discuss it, as they had discussed Bellatrix's death.

_They discussed Bellatrix's death to hurt Lestrange. They don't know that Dora's death would hurt me, so they wouldn't share._

He told himself that Dora was strong and well-trained. Just as he'd made certain that Sirius would be ready for Bellatrix, he had made certain that Dora knew about what a terribly wrong turn their lives might take if they weren't careful.

_And Dora would have sacrificed her life for the cause. Dora hardly ignored Bellatrix when she walked by her cell._

The idea that he might have slept through news of Dora haunted him. It haunted him so completely that he decided that it was no longer time to stand by his convictions.

"Peter," he whispered to the crack in the wall.

 _"Hi Moony!"_ said Peter with a cheerfulness that made Remus want to hex him. _"Finally bored enough to talk to me?"_

"Have you heard anyone say anything about Auror Tonks?"

 _"Tonks?"_ asked Peter as if he'd never heard the name before.

"Bellatrix Lestrange's niece. She escorted me here, and Bellatrix was threatening to kill her. I imagine that that may have been what motivated Bellatrix to break out."

 _"Oh. Andromeda's daughter."_ Remus could almost see Peter's face scrunching up in concentration the way it had when he'd been confronted with a particularly difficult assignment in school. _"No, no one's mentioned anyone but Sirius and Bellatrix."_

"Thank you," said Remus reluctantly.

_"Why do you care about her?"_

"She's Sirius' cousin."

Remus thought it was a perfectly reasonable excuse. Why shouldn't he care about what remained of Sirius' family, as close as he and Sirius were?

Peter didn't think it was a perfectly reasonable excuse. Peter laughed his squeaky, high-pitched laugh. _"You have never been a good liar, Remus."_

"I'm not lying."

 _"Good for you."_ Peter sounded more sincere than taunting. Remus would have preferred taunting. _"You always held back in school when you didn't have to. There were so many girls ho fancied you, and you had yourself convinced that they would hate you if they knew and that they would have to know if you so much as held hands with them."_

It was true, and Remus still didn't think he had been wrong. What a terrible, dangerous thing it would have been for all concerned if he and one of his classmates had grown close, only for her to find out…

 _"I know what you thought,"_ Peter continued. _"I think you were wrong. I think you made it harder on yourself than you needed to. I'm glad you finally trusted someone."_

Remus remained silent.

Peter didn't know about Remus' relationship with Dora, not really. All Peter knew was that Remus had gone out of his way to ask about Dora when he never voluntarily asked Peter about anything. So Peter was trying to get Remus to confess by pretending that Peter already knew. It was the oldest trick in the book- and an effective one, to be sure.

For all that, Remus couldn't help but remember Sirius' reaction when Remus had told him about Dora. The disgusting jokes. The threat to sabotage their relationship. The dismissive way he'd sometimes spoken about every aspect of Remus' life, whether it related to Dora or to his now-defunct teaching career. The complete lack of understanding

Peter seemed kinder.

He'd thought Peter was kinder than Sirius once before. It had ended in disaster.

With the last of his metal fortitude, he reminded himself that Lily and James were dead and that Harry was a marked man.

He ignored Peter.

* * *

The second full moon was worse than the first. His broken left arm had not yet healed. The throbbing burning stab of an already-broken arm transforming to a wolf's front leg was so acute that he remembered it clearly when he resumed his human form the next morning.

His arm had been broken in two places the previous month; some ginger prodding suggested that it was now broken in five places. His cell was once again full of the tangy scene of blood.

He wondered whether anyone else had escaped. He decided that he didn't care. He had done all he could do to protect the world from Voldemort. If the world didn't really want protecting, that was the world's problem.

He passed out again, grateful for the release from thought and pain.

The next thing he noticed was Peter's voice urgently asking whether he was all right. Peter sounded hoarse, as if he'd been asking the question for hours. He vaguely remembered that he wasn't talking to Peter and let his head fall back to his thin, blood-stained mattress with a thud.

He awoke to find himself levitated into the far corner of his cell. Ropes bound him so tightly that he cried out. It felt as if at least half of his ribs had cracked.

A team of hit wizards vanished the blood from his cell and- to his shock- replaced his mattress with a clean one.

He didn't ask why. He just tried to appreciate it.

Someone splashed dittany in his general direction. He was so well-covered with cuts and bruises that even this aimless application helped improve his physical condition as well as his mood.

Then the hit wizards were gone and the only sound left anywhere near Remus came from the cell next door.

_"Did they untie you, Remus?"_

"Yes." His desire to know what was going on outweighed his desire not to talk to Peter.

_"Good. I heard them bind you, but I didn't hear them remove the bind, and they know I can't see them so I thought they might not have bothered."_

"Why does it matter whether you can see them?"

_"I was the one who told them that they'd better at least clean up the blood. I said Sirius wouldn't like it. He was the one who got the dementors out of Azkaban, and he was the one who killed Bellatrix when they couldn't control him, and I told them what he's like when he's in a temper…"_

Remus couldn't help laughing at the thought of Sirius learning that Peter Pettigrew, of all people, was invoking his name to get what he wanted. That in this one instance what Peter wanted and what Sirius would have wanted overlapped completely was irrelevant.

He immediately regretted laughing. The hit wizards had healed some of his cuts, but they hadn't done anything about his cracked and broken bones.

The ribs must be broken, not cracked, he decided. He'd lived through cracked ribs too many times to count. They didn't hurt this much.

 _"Why is that funny?"_ Peter demanded.

"You don't think that it takes a certain nerve for the man who framed Sirius Black for thirteen murders he did not commit to threaten someone else with what Sirius might do?"

_"It was my only choice! Do you think I liked doing it?"_

"I don't know. Did you?"

 _"No!"_ The _no_ was so emphatic that Remus was inclined to believe it. _"I didn't like it any better than I liked it in school. You were strong and smart, Remus, you wouldn't understand. There were people who would have hexed me in the corridors- would have left me locked in a closet where no one would have found me for weeks- and they didn't because they were afraid James and Sirius would come for me. How many times did I hear it? 'Don't do it, he'll tell Potter and Black.' Some of them hated Sirius and James and some of them wanted Sirius and James to like them. I didn't even matter. I only existed as a piece of them. It was humiliating."_

"That was hardly their fault. They didn't ask to be- to be the height of cool. It came naturally to them."

Peter's chuckle was almost wry. _"I know."_

"Then how could you betray them?"

_"Voldemort would have killed me if I hadn't. I protected myself. You and Sirius can say you would have died, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us had to throw ourselves on the funeral pyre."_

He didn't know why he'd expected a satisfactory answer from Peter.

* * *

Time made less and less sense as the final month of his sentence wore on. He remembered the routine he'd tried to implement when he'd first arrived, but it no longer seemed important.

He couldn't walk laps of his cell or do press-ups or stretches. He hurt too much. He had to conserve his energy.

He could try to focus on his Patronus memories. He could try to recite the names of the entire student body of Hogwarts. He could try… but he inevitably fell asleep when he'd barely started. He seemed to need more sleep now than he'd ever needed before. Time no longer had any meaning.

He wondered whether time had meaning for Harry. Had Sirius told Harry that he, Harry, was the final Horcrux? Had Harry been adamant that he should make the ultimate sacrifice as quickly as possible? Had Harry experienced the in-between, as Remus had? Had time moved forward or backward for him?

Or had Harry died?

Wouldn't Remus have heard, even here, if the Boy Who Lived had died? Wouldn't the screams of agony have been so loud that they would have reached him even here?

Or would Dumbledore have covered it up? Covered up his own failure? Covered up Remus' failure to improve Harry's lot along with the future of all of wizarding Britain?

If Harry was alive, Harry was still growing. That made time so much easier to measure. Another growth spurt; a need for a new set of clothes in a larger size. Another year of schooling complete.

What of Dora? How did time move for her? Were her days longer because she missed him? Or had she hardly noticed a change, busy as she was with her family and her friends and her Auror duties?

Has she finally realized that she was better off without Remus?

She was better off without him, he remembered. That would always be true in any reality. He was helpless, broken, and infamous. If he died during his next transformation, would that be a blessing? Would it let her be free?

He'd done everything he could do to protect her from Voldemort and the Death Eaters. It was in Dumbledore's hands now. Dumbledore and Harry. It would be all right if he died. Dora would survive.

Not that it mattered whether he'd done everything he could do. Not that it mattered whether Dora would be better off without him. He wasn't going to make it through his third full moon in Azkaban anyway.

He knew it as a human.

He knew it as a wolf.

* * *

As he shuddered and waited for the change, he thought of the nicknames given to the April full moon. They were soft, gentle names.

The Pink Moon in honor of the pink flowers that bloomed in early spring.

The Sprouting Grass Moon in honor of the new growth of the season.

The Fish Moon in celebration of the fact that food, sometimes scarce in the winter, was abundant again.

The Hare Moon, symbolizing rebirth.

The Egg Moon, as birds, too, began to reproduce.

The transformation was not soft or gentle, nor did it feel like a comforting rebirth.

* * *

The wolf was furious.

His nostrils were full of the scent of human beings. Flesh. Prey.

They were close and the wolf was ravenous.

He was hungry for food, but above all else he was hungry for more of his own kind.

He needed to reproduce. He needed to bite, to rip, to tear, to feel his bloodline continuing, to ease the ache that consumed his body.

He hurled himself over and over at the bars that were all that stood between him and that which he most needed.

When his left front leg could no longer support him, he found himself in a tangled pile on the floor. He had to stop the craving, the need that made his skin crawl beneath his fur. He sank his teeth into his right front leg. It didn't stop the craving, but he tried again.

* * *

Remus blinked the blood out of his eyes.

His moan was met by peals of laughter as he tried desperately to situate himself.

His morning-after questions returned to him as they inevitably did after thirty years of practice.

_Did I hurt anyone?_

No. He was in Azkaban and he could barely move. He hadn't left his cell. There were no signs that anyone else had entered his cell- and if someone had, he probably wouldn't have bitten and scratched himself quite so badly. Nor would his fellow inmates have been likely to laugh at his predicament.

_How bad are my injuries?_

He was conscious, which meant that this was not his worst transformation, nor his second-worst, nor his tenth-worst. But he was beginning to have doubts that he would ever use his left arm again. It was no longer merely broken in five places; it was shattered.

He was more worried about the bloody mess that was his right arm. That was his wand arm.

His ribs ached; that was nothing new. His lungs hadn't been punctured, though.

His nose was broken and his body was smeared with blood.

_Do I need professional treatment?_

Irrelevant. It was out of his control.

_Can I afford professional treatment?_

Irrelevant. It was out of his control.

_How suspicious do I look?_

He needed to remove this question from his self-review. He no longer had a secret. Everyone knew who and what he was.

_What do I remember about last night?_

He'd meditated on the rebirth symbolism historically given to the April full moon and gone into the transformation convinced that he would not survive the night. He vaguely recalled feelings of anger and frustration, but nothing specific.

He looked again at his right arm and became aware of an iron taste on his tongue. Yes, he remembered biting himself- but he had no desire to dwell on the matter further.

He struggled to his feet, hoping against hope that he hadn't drunk or spilled his water while in wolf-form. He'd tucked his water pitcher into the farthest corner of his cell the night before, and now crossing from the front of the cell to the back seemed like an insurmountably long journey.

He took one stiff, shaky step and then another.

The door of his cell shrieked open behind him before he was able to take a third step.

"Come on," said one of the Aurors. "You're free to go."

_**To be continued.** _


	84. Tonks Interlude K

At long last, the boat came into view through Tonks' enchanted spyglass. She could make out Proudfoot and Armstrong with ease, but for a heart-stopping moment she thought that they were alone. Remus, she finally realized, was slumped low in the boat.

She remembered how straight he'd sat when they'd brought him to Azkaban, how politely he'd spoken to her and to Kingsley. It had been the day after a full moon- just as today was, of course- but he had hidden the extent of his exhaustion. Today he couldn't pretend to be anything but weak and sick and…

Tonks hated Dolores Umbridge. Simply despised her.

She faded into the background as the boat drew nearer. Sooner rather than later she would have to tell everyone in the Auror office about her marital plans. The gossip would spread like wildfire through the whole of the Ministry. She wouldn't mind; she would even enjoy it. But she was going to make her announcement on her own terms (well, she supposed she would allow Remus a certain amount of input). She wasn't going to have Proudfoot and Armstrong go scurrying to Scrimgeour with the news that she had greeted the most famous werewolf in Britain with sobs and a hug and a kiss.

Not that she didn't trust Proudfoot and Armstrong in general. They were decent, competent Aurors. They wouldn't give all Aurors a bad name the way Robards and Gordon had done when they'd arrested Remus.

Proudfoot pointed his wand in her direction when she tripped over some rocks at the edge of the cliff, not far up the narrow spit of land from the invisible dock where the Aurors kept their magically concealed boats.

She still hadn't worked exactly out how Remus had seen the boat when she and Kingsley had accompanied him to Azkaban in the first place. She didn't think he'd cast a spell, wandless as he'd been; he had some sort of experience that had let him know precisely where and how to look. She wondered if he would tell her if she asked.

She stayed still. She let her skin and her hair take on the color of the rocks which surrounded her. Her clothing already blended in perfectly. Proudfoot lowered his wand, muttering that he must have seen a bird.

Armstrong hauled Remus to his feet, but Remus stepped shakily out of the boat without additional help. He had lost weight and his hair looked more grey than it it had three months before. His left arm was wrapped in a crude sling, but she could see that it was bent in a way that an arm was not meant to bend.

"We're not permitted to take you anywhere but St. Mungo's," said Armstrong. "Are you certain that you don't want to go?"

"Quite certain, thank you," said Remus courteously. Tonks understood that. She didn't like St. Mungo's, either.

"Is there anyone you want us to notify that you're here?" asked Proudfoot.

"No. I'm fine on my own." His voice, always slightly hoarse, was now so rough that it seemed as if it should belong to someone else entirely.

Proudfoot and Armstrong glanced at each other, and Tonks was glad that they had the grace to worry about leaving a sick man on his own by the edge of the North Sea. The walk due north to the nearest town was a pleasant challenge for a healthy person on a good day. It wasn't remotely pleasant for someone in Remus' fragile condition.

She was slightly annoyed that Remus hadn't accepted their offer of help. If he didn't want to ask for her by name out of a misguided need to protect her, she would have begrudgingly understood his reasoning. But he might at least have asked for Sirius.

He didn't. He thanked Proudfoot and Armstrong and watched as they took their Portkey back to the Auror office.

She stepped away from the edge of the cliff and a smile lit his grey, pain-lined face. "Hello, Dora."

She wondered how he had recognized her. She had made herself smaller and slighter, the better to hide in a crevice and not draw attention to herself. Her clothing was nothing she would have worn except while undercover. She supposed that her skin and hair matching her surroundings so conveniently might have been a giveaway.

Or perhaps he had just looked into her eyes and truly seen _her_ , no matter what she'd done with her physical body. She liked that explanation better. It was more romantic.

She concentrated and grew a few inches while broadening her shoulders and letting her skin return to its natural pale complexion. Finally, she snapped her hair into her favorite shade of bubblegum pink.

"Hello, Remus."

He took one long step toward her. "You're all right?"

Her throat tightened and her eyes burned. _He_ was asking _her_ whether she was all right? No one had sent _her_ to Azkaban for three months and refused to provide her with medical treatment. "Of course I'm all right."

"I thought-perhaps- that Bellatrix-"

So that was it. It wasn't an unreasonable fear. "Sirius took care of her about five minutes after she broke out. I don't mind telling you, I'm a little bit jealous." The joke fell flat. Duels to the death with murderous family members just weren't that funny.

"Good," said Remus. "I mean, good that Bellatrix is no longer a threat. Not good that you don't have everything you want at all times."

"The only thing I want is you." She grabbed him, hard, and only remembered why she hadn't done that in the first place when he gave a strangled gasp. She tried to pull away, but his arms were locked around her and he wouldn't let go. "This is hurting you," she whispered.

"It's worth it."

Her laugh was choked and waterlogged. "Is it all right for me to Apparate you?"

"Yes."

She pushed her feelings down and focused only on performing Apparition perfectly.

* * *

Once they were safely inside her flat, Tonks settled Remus onto her bed and looked as him as detachedly as she could. _Compartmentalize_ , Mad-Eye had said roughly eleven hundred thousand times during her Auror training.

"The robes are beyond fixing," said Remus quietly. He was right; the robes were little better than rags.

"I'm not worried about the robes," said Tonks. "Robes can be replaced."

"Not if you're unemployable and have no way of buying more."

Tonks glared. "I happen to be very employable and more than willing to buy you anything you need. For now, you have other robes in your trunk." She pointed at the trunk and he turned his head to look. She heard his neck crack painfully as he did.

"Where did you get that?"

"Sirius liberated it from Hogwarts after they arrested you. He let me take it here so there wouldn't be any chance of the Weasley twins accidentally blowing it up while they're working on their products at his cottage. Honestly, it looks like a warehouse in there." She vanished his robes into nothingness and winced at the sight of the bruises on his ribs.

Bruises she could heal. Cuts she could treat with dittany. She could even mend cracked ribs with confidence. But his left arm, which lay at a nauseating angle, was something else entirely.

Remus followed her gaze. "Do you have Skele-Gro?"

"Always. Ever since the first time I tripped over my own boots and knocked out a tooth."

He looked amused. "Vanish the bones, what's left of them. They need to be regrown, not repaired."

"No," said Tonks firmly. Auror training required one to be adept at basic emergency healing. The fine detail work required in repairing shattered bones was beyond her ability and she knew it. "I'll rewrap your arm and we can go to St. Mungo's in a day or two when you've had a chance to rest."

"I don't think that's appropriate, Dora."

"I don't care." She opened his trunk and removed the softest, most comfortable clothing she could find. "Put these on. I'm going to get you a blood-replenishing potion. Anything special you want to eat or drink?"

"Pumpkin juice," he said. She was surprised that he had requested anything at all, and pleased that he requested something that was already in her flat. She brought the juice and the potion to him and then sat beside him on the bed. " _Accio_ !" Three carefully preserved editions of the _Daily Prophet_ flew into her hand.

"I have the highest respect and appreciation for your skill as a Healer, Dora, but I'm not certain I'm recovered enough to stomach Rita Skeeter's latest masterpiece."

She grinned wickedly. "Oh, you are." The paper was already folded open to the interview Sirius and her mother had given in the aftermath of Bellatrix's death. She began to read in her most dramatic voice.

_"Sirius Black is at once everything you would expect, and nothing you would expect. Raised in the lap of luxury as a member of the influential and infamous Black family, his star fell as fast as it rose when he was wrongfully imprisoned for a mass murder…"_

By the time she got to the part about Sirius' smile hinting equally of love and danger, Remus was laughing so hard that she was worried he would re-crack the ribs she had just mended.

"The letter from the students on page 11," he said when she had finished with a flourish and he had caught his breath.

"So glad you asked," she said, and she flipped the paper over. She held it up so that he could see the ninety-seven names which accompanied it. Again, she began to read aloud. This time, she did not use her most dramatic voice.

_To the Editors of the Daily Prophet,_

_We are current students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We represent each of the four Houses and each of the seven years. Some of us are diligent students; some of us are not. Some of us are particularly interested in Defense Against the Dark Arts; some of us are not._

_All of us have been taught by Professor R.J. Lupin during the past three years. Those of us who have been taught by other Defense professors can tell you, unequivocally, that he was the best of them. There was no real competition. He has helped us unravel the riddles of the sphinx. He has taught us how to protect ourselves from magical creatures ranging from grindylows to doxies. He has taught us about the Unforgivable Curses and how to avoid falling prey to them. He is willing not only to prepare us properly for our OWLS and NEWTS, but to teach us more advanced magic such as Patronus Charms. On the subject of charms, he always coordinates his lesson plans with our Charms instructor, Professor Flitwick, so that the classes complement one another._

_When Cedric Diggory (one of the undersigned) was chosen as the Hogwarts Champion in the first Triwizard Tournament in over a century, he specifically asked for Professor Lupin's help in preparing. To the surprise of no one, this help was cheerfully offered. Professor Lupin is not a brilliant professor merely because his knowledge of his subject is encyclopedic (even though for some reason he often claims that it is not). He is also a brilliant teacher because he's funny and compassionate. He helps us be less afraid so we can focus on learning. He shows us that we are capable of more than we thought. He makes every lesson memorable in more ways than one._

_Most importantly to those of us who will be third years next year, Boggart Day has become a treasured tradition and we do not want to miss our opportunity to take part in it. Everyone in the school knows that on the first day of the autumn term, third years are given the opportunity to face a Boggart while learning to cast Riddikulus. It is a collective experience that brings us closer together as a school while also helping us a learn an undeniably useful spell. In the hands of a less skilled teacher, this lesson could be humiliating or even dangerous. In the hands of Professor Lupin, it is a wonderful challenge._

_When Professor Lupin was arrested, many of us walked out of our classes in protest. We returned to class the next day because we value our educations and we know that he does as well. However, we have not changed our opinion._

_We do not support the Child Safety and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. We believe our safety has been compromised because we have been deprived of a professor who helped us learn to protect ourselves. We understand that he has the potential to be dangerous during the full moon, but our classes did not take place during the full moon._

_While no business should be forced to hire someone who is not up to the job, Hogwarts should not be forbidden from hiring the best person for the job._

_We hope that we will be able to welcome Professor Lupin back to Hogwarts next September in time for the new third years' Boggart Day._

_Respectfully Submitted…_

She held up the paper again so that Remus could review the list of names.

Remus was very, very still. He looked as if he might cry.

"I wish I'd had a Boggart Day when I was a third year," she said as lightly as she could. "Especially as that was the year someone opened a cursed vault in the restricted section of the library. There were hundreds of boggarts all over the school, and since it had only been a few years since You-Know-Who fell, half the school saw him in their boggarts and it was tricky to banish them. That was how I became friends with Tulip, you know. She taught herself _Riddikulus_ from a book and then we broke into the vault in the restricted section…" She realized that she was rambling and stopped herself.

"Of course you did." His voice was still rough. She knew that she ought to find something to soothe his throat, but she felt as if someone had cast one of her Great Aunt Walburga's infamous permanent sticking charms on her. She didn't want to leave Remus' side.

"Madam Pince never forgave me. We didn't get detention, though, because she didn't want to admit that we'd managed it under her watch."

"Or she didn't think you ought to be punished for trying to help," Remus suggested.

Tonks shook her head. "None of this 'seeing the best in everyone.' Especially not in Madam Pince."

"She's passionate about her work."

"She loves books so much that she won't let anyone read them!"

"I highly doubt that she ever became angry with you for _reading_ a book."

Tonks scowled. Remus might have been right- she might have once transfigured an entire row of books into crows just to watch Madam Pince's reaction- but she didn't want to argue about Madam Pince of all people.

"I'm sorry, Dora," said Remus. "You've been so kind to me-"

" _No_ !" She didn't want to hear about kindness, as if it were unexpected, as if she were taking pity on him, as if they were mere acquaintances, as if he was not part of the life she had chosen. "I only brought up Madam Pince because I wanted you to stop thinking about how much your students love you and start thinking about how much **_I_ ** love you."

Well. That had come out wrong.

But Remus was staring at her, wide-eyed. It was as good an opportunity as any. She slid from the bed and knelt in front of Remus.

It wasn't quite romantic enough, so she gave a wave of her wand to make the ceiling sparkle, then conjured and lit a dozen candles on the windowsill. She stowed her wand and took Remus' hand in hers.

His hand was dry and rough. His nails were cracked where she hadn't been able to mend them. She could see dried blood where her cleaning spell hadn't worked quite as well as Muggle plumbing would have.

She never wanted anyone to hurt this man again.

"Three months ago, I asked you to run away with me. You told me you loved me. You told me that if I still loved you after three months… well, you didn't tell me what was going to happen after three months because we were too busy kissing. And that was a very good use of our time. So I've decided that what we should do is get married."

He looked far too serious and not nearly elated enough. "Dora…"

She rushed on, wanting to stave off the moment he said no because he felt awful and didn't believe she knew her own mind. "Before you even think of saying no, you should be aware that I've already told my parents and Mad-Eye and Sirius and Harry that I'm asking, so you'll have to be the one to explain to them if you turn me down."

Now he looked amused again. "That is a powerful disincentive." He paused. "Do you mean to tell me that all of those people approve? Your parents?"

"Dad was a little surprised. I don't think Mum was. But they want me to be happy, Remus, and you make me happy. I know that in your mind I've been your wife all along. But I'd like to have a ceremony so that you can be my husband in my mind, too, as well as on the Ministry scrolls. Will you marry me?"

"You know I will," he said softly.

She grinned so hard that it hurt her face. " _Accio_ , ring!" An apple ring from Honeydukes flew into her hand. "You may now place the engagement ring on my finger."

He laughed, as she'd hoped he would. "I can offer you my mother's ring, which is somewhat less likely to dissolve into a pile of sugar."

She knew how little he had of his mother, and how he had revered her. Not for the first time, she wished that she could have met Hope Lupin. "I would be honored."

"It's more traditional than your usual style. If you can't see yourself wearing it-"

"I can see myself wearing it."

"You haven't seen it."

"I don't need to."

He almost rolled his eyes. "Have it your way."

"I almost always do." She stood up and climbed back onto the bed, catching his lips with hers as she did.

(She was almost graceful in that moment. She decided that the universe owed her this unusual experience after the way it had treated her when she and Remus had first shared this very bed. As she recalled, she had accidentally kicked him before they'd even gotten started. Then she'd tripped over nothing and knocked a painting off the wall. But the rest of the night had gone well. It had gone very well indeed.)

Their kisses and caresses multiplied and she was just beginning to lose herself in the sensations when Remus yawned widely.

Right. It was the night after a full moon.

"That was not a comment on your-" Remus yawned again.

"I know," she said. "Go to sleep." And she lay down beside her fiancé.

* * *

Eventually, Tonks detached herself from Remus and made her way to her small fireplace. She tossed a pinch of Floo powder into the flames and called out to Sirius.

He dropped to his knees by his hearth almost immediately. "Tonks? What is it? Is it about Remus."

"Yes. He's here. He's all right."

Sirius' concern turned to anger. "You knew he was being released today and you didn't tell me?"

"I'm not allowed to repeat things I only know because I'm an Auror." It was true. It was also true that the Auror regulations about confidentiality had been more than a little convenient. She'd wanted Remus to herself for a moment. She'd wanted to discuss their marriage right away, and if Sirius had been there…

Well, Sirius hadn't been there. And he couldn't argue that there weren't any regulations binding her, because there were. He could only mutter something unflattering about rule-abiding Ministry employees.

"Do you want to come over?" she asked, proud of how well she was ignoring his glower.

Sirius nodded. "Step back."

He clambered through the Floo and into her flat. The small fireplace was a rather tight fit for him, and he tumbled awkwardly into her kitchen. "Even your flat is clumsy?" he demanded as he regained his balance. "Was it always like this or did it just happen after you moved in?"

"My flat is perfect, just like me," she said smugly. Then she held up her left hand so that Sirius could see her candy apple engagement ring. "Remus seems to like both of us just fine."

"So he agreed to marry you," said Sirius flatly.

"How do you know he wasn't the one who asked me?"

"He would have proposed with an actual ring. Do you suppose he really wants to marry you, or do you suppose he just wanted you to shut up so he could get some sleep?"

She'd been prepared for Sirius to be irritated because she hadn't told him that Remus' release had gone through the minute she'd known. She hadn't been prepared for Sirius to be this mean. "Why don't you just pull out your wand and hex me?" she challenged. "If you think you can."

Sirius looked like he might be considering it, but ultimately he stowed his wand and stalked out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. She chased him.

They found Remus sitting up on the bed, looking like he could have used another ten hours of sleep.

"You woke him," Tonks accused Sirius.

"He needs to be awake to eat," said Sirius with the distinct air of a practiced know-it-all. "He can go to sleep until tomorrow morning after that." Sirius glanced at the bandages on Remus' left arm. "Bad enough that Tonks couldn't heal it?"

"I broke it in February," said Remus. His voice was still too hoarse to Tonks' ears, but Sirius seemed unconcerned. "I couldn't mend it, so I broke it in a few more places in March and I shattered it last night. The bones need to be vanished and regrown."

Sirius nodded as if this was a perfectly reasonable solution to the situation. "Do you want me to do it?"

"Please," said Remus.

"You're not a qualified Healer!" Tonks objected as Remus removed the binding on his arm.

"No," agreed Sirius. "But I'm good enough to do this."

Remus braced himself against the wall and Sirius waved his wand. He didn't even have the courtesy to say the vanishing spell aloud. Remus's arm slowly deflated into a floppy, shapeless tube of flesh. It was disgusting, and Tonks wasn't easy to disgust.

Remus smiled. "That's the first time it hasn't hurt in two months," he said.

"Do you want to leave it like that?" Sirius teased. He was already summoning Tonks' Skele-Gro.

Remus pretended to consider. "I don't think so."

Sirius conjured a beaker and filled it to the brim with Skele-Gro.

"He won't be able to eat or sleep. It'll be too painful," said Tonks. She sounded like a petulant child. She didn't like sounding like a petulant child in her own flat.

Remus downed what Tonks knew to be a particularly disgusting potion without coughing or sputtering.

"He'll be fine," said Sirius. "Welcome to the world of werewolf pain tolerance."

"I _will_ be fine, Dora," said Remus with an indulgent smile. "This isn't the first time." He glanced back and forth between Sirius and Tonks. "Will you leave me alone with Sirius for a moment?"

She managed to stop herself from screaming that _no_ , she would not leave them alone, and that she did not appreciate Remus and Sirius taking sides against her when it came to something as dangerous as doing high-level healing outside of St. Mungo's.

"It's all right, Dora," Remus soothed.

She didn't want to be soothed. "Is this about the thing with Harry on Easter?" she asked.

Sirius and Remus looked at each other as if she weren't in the room.

"It is," she decided. "If it is, why can't you trust me?"

Remus reached for her with his good arm and twined his fingers through hers. "We can, of course. Tell me what happened on Easter, Sirius."

To his credit, Sirius made no objection. Instead, he sank heavily to the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands for a moment. "He did it, Moony. Harry went to Albania to face Voldemort."

Tonks gasped even though it wasn't entirely a surprise. Sirius gave her a wry smile, and suddenly she didn't feel as cross with him anymore. "Voldemort was… back?" she asked.

"Dumbledore had him resurrected so he could be killed properly," Sirius explained. "Because of some magic that happened the last time Voldemort tried to kill Harry, Harry had to be there so Voldemort could curse him again."

 _"He had to stand there and let Voldemort try to kill him?"_ Tonks was too caught up by the horrifying image to remember that she'd ever been irritated.

"He did." Sirius nodded curtly. "He managed it. We have a body. Voldemort's gone for good."

Remus slumped hard against the wall, his fingers slackening in Tonks' grip.

"This is good news, though, isn't it?" Tonks asked.

"It's good news," Sirius and Remus said in unison.

"It's a little overwhelming," added Remus.

"Nothing that can't be fixed with dinner," Sirius continued, his voice slightly strained. "What do you want on your first day out of Azkaban, Moony? We can get almost anything by owl-order around here. The Potted Pig will send us cawl, I believe."

Remus' tired face lit up. "Yes, please. Owl the Potted Pig."

Tonks made a conscious effort not to be jealous that Sirius knew exactly what Remus would want without asking. It was easier not to be jealous once the food arrived.

The cawl was delicious- a stew made of lamb, cabbage, and leeks- and accompanied by bread and cheese.

"Is this what your mother made for you the day after full moons?" asked Tonks. She knew that cawl was a traditional Welsh dish, but she had never given it any particular consideration before.

Remus confirmed that it was. Tonks mentally vowed that it would always, always be available in their home.

Pudding was the Potted Pig's speciality of dark chocolate delice, baked white chocolate, and chocolate ice cream. Tonks supposed that it would be effective against any remnants of Dementors, and indeed Remus seemed more and more cheerful as the evening went on.

Sirius departed as soon as they had finished eating, just as Remus' eyelids began to droop. "Back to bed," Tonks told him, and he let her escort him without complaint.

* * *

The next morning, Tonks awoke to see that Remus' left arm looked like an arm again. It seemed that Sirius had known what he was doing.

She reached out and brushed the locks of hair that had fallen across Remus' eyes in his sleep. As gentle as her touch had been, Remus awoke. "Good morning," he said.

"An excellent morning," she agreed. "My first morning as an engaged woman."

"No remorse in the cold light of dawn?" he asked.

"None. I don't know why I ever doubted you. It was- it was a great shock when you first told me what you'd done, and I was silly."

"Not silly at all."

"Very silly. But I'm over it now. Now every time I think of you, and Teddy, and the family that we're going to be, it seems more real. I'm more sure that this is life I choose. You. Teddy." She smiled happily. "Every time I say his name, _he_ seems more real. I can't wait to meet him. He'll be wonderful, won't he?"

"He was wonderful," said Remus. "His hair started changing colors as soon as he was born."

"So did mine. It'll be wonderful to have another Metamorphmagus in the word. But I do hope he looks like you when he isn't morphing."

"You thought he did," said Remus. "I thought he looked like you. I thought- he was an infant- but I was sure that he had your spirit, and your kindness, and your open mind."

"And your intelligence, and your humor, and your ability to walk across a room without tripping over something. He'll be a Hufflepuff, though."

"He'll be a Gryffindor," Remus argued without any real bite.

"He'll be perfect," said Tonks. "We'll be perfect."

Remus gazed at her in a way that she had never really expected a man to gaze at her. "I love you."

"And I love you."

She kissed him again, feeling immeasurably happier than she had felt one short day before.

_**To be continued.** _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auxiliary Disclaimer: No offense intended to the real Potted Pig. It was the first thing that came up when I searched for "Welsh restaurants" and the name was so delightful I couldn't stand to change it.


	85. Harry and the Ministry

Harry grabbed the Marauder's Map, tossed his invisibility cloak over his head, and made his way to Sirius' house in Hogsmeade. It was the middle of the day on a Thursday, but the fifth years had been given the afternoon to study for their OWLs and most were taking full advantage. No one would miss Harry (other than Ron and Hermione, who knew perfectly well where he was going).

It was Lupin who opened the door the instant Harry removed his invisibility cloak. Lupin looked a bit tired, but no worse than he often looked on the morning after a full moon.

Harry grinned and Lupin smiled back. "Sirius told me that everything went according to plan," said Lupin.

"It did," confirmed Harry.

"Is it all right if I hug you?"

Harry supposed that it was. He'd intended to demand that Sirius take him to see Lupin, after all, and here Lupin had saved him the trouble by coming to Hogsmeade. He hugged Lupin back, pleased that Lupin wasn't too terribly much the worse for wear after his time in Azkaban.

"Sirius will be back soon," Lupin explained as he guided Harry through the familiar maze of the Weasley twins' products to the only area that was empty enough for the two of them to sit comfortably. He casually summoned a bottle of butterbeer for Harry, and Harry accepted it.

"I didn't come to talk Sirius. I came to talk to you."

A puzzled look briefly crossed Lupin's face. "I see. Why?"

"I wanted to see if you were really all right. After Azkaban. Sirius said you were, but…" He trailed off, feeling foolish. Sirius had told him that Lupin was all right, and Sirius didn't lie to him. "After Voldemort hit me with Avada Kedavra, I went to a place where I wasn't exactly alive and wasn't exactly dead."

Lupin was very still and very serious now. "I'm familiar with that place. I meant to talk to you about it before you went to face Voldemort, but I was unavoidably detained."

"Did it look like King's Cross Station to you?" asked Harry.

"It looked like my childhood bedroom." He tilted his head, deep in thought. "I believe it takes the shape of a place that represents a moment of transition in your mind. For you, it was the place where you boarded the train to Hogwarts and properly entered the wizarding world. For me, it was the place where I was bitten by Fenrir Greyback and turned into a werewolf."

That made sense to Harry. "I saw a bit of it," Harry admitted. "A bit of you. You looked awful. Worse than I've ever seen you look. You were begging a woman to be allowed to go home. You asked for five hours, or five months, or five years. I guess you got the five years."

"As soon as I asked for five years, I ended up on the Hogwarts Express just in time to become your professor. As you know, I wasn't at all certain that I'd asked for something I truly wanted."

Harry understood that better than Lupin knew. It would have been the perfect time to tell Lupin about Teddy, but Lupin started to speak again before Harry could open his mouth.

"I'm a bit relieved that you saw that, Harry. I'd begun to wonder whether it truly happened. I wasn't able to show those memories to Dumbledore the way I was able to show him, for example, Sirius' death."

Harry didn't like to think of Sirius' death, or Lupin's, or Tonks', or Cedric's, or Dumbledore's, or any of it. "Who was the woman you were talking to?" he asked. It was a personal question, but Harry needed to buy time. He needed to find a way to tell Lupin that he and Sirius and Tonks and Cedric would all live, but Teddy would not.

"She was my mother. Or rather, she was a projection of my mother. My mother was a Muggle, you see, and Muggles cannot become ghosts. So they do not linger in the in-between the way witches and wizards do."

"I saw my mum too," said Harry. "At least, I thought I did. I only know her from the memories that you and Sirius showed me, so I guess I wouldn't know if she was a- projection." He hated the thought. He liked the idea that he'd been able to speak to his parents, just once.

"I've little idea what happens after we die. I imagine that it could have been your mother. She was, after all, a witch."

"She told me that she could sense me when I was in trouble. They both told me- her and my dad- they told me that they always know when it's Halloween because they feel you and Sirius reaching out to them. They thought that you were dying in Azkaban. They said you were too close to the veil."

Lupin was paler than usual. "It certainly sounds as if you met your parents. And I might have died in Azkaban if they'd left me there for another month, or if Peter Pettigrew hadn't demanded that they clean up the blood on one occasion-"

"Pettigrew?!" exclaimed Harry. "The rat? _Scabbers_ ?"

"I was surprised myself," said Lupin.

"Why did he do it?" Harry tried to tone down his outrage. He wanted Lupin to live- of course he did- but where had Pettigrew's concern for other people been when he'd sold Harry's parents to Voldemort and framed Sirius for the crime?

Lupin paused, though it was evident that he had thought about this before. "The easy answer is that he thought there might be something in it for him."

"But what could that be? He's going to be in Azkaban for the rest of his life. You can't change that even if you want to."

"That's true. And I do not want to change it. I think Azkaban-without dementors- is a suitable punishment for Death Eaters."

"So? Why did he do it?" demanded Harry. He didn't really expect Lupin to have an answer, and he certainly didn't think that Lupin had done anything wrong, but he was nonetheless annoyed that Peter Pettigrew had done anything for which Harry might possibly feel grateful.

"Perhaps he did it because he didn't have anything to lose. He is, as you say, likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. He didn't mind doing a kind thing when it didn't cost him anything one way or the other."

Harry didn't like that explanation very much, but he suspected that Lupin was correct.

Meanwhile, there was a crack of Apparition outside. Lupin rose to his feet cautiously, and Harry followed suit, but Sirius' voice called out as the front door opened. "It's me, Moony. The Ministry is just as hideous as always, in case you were wondering." He rounded the corner and saw Harry. "Harry, what are you doing out of school? What's wrong?"

"I fancied a chat with Professor Lupin."

"Where are Ron and Hermione?"

"Studying."

_"You left school alone?"_

Sirius was obviously angry now, and Harry was puzzled. "Didn't you write a map and become an Animagus so you could leave school whenever you felt like it when you were my age?"

"And I ended up in Azkaban for twelve years. Is that something you'd like?"

"Padfoot, I'm not certain that we can draw a direct line between skiving off for a butterbeer on a Thursday afternoon and Azkaban," said Lupin quietly.

Sirius looked from Lupin to Harry and sat down. "I'm sorry, Harry," he said at last. "I'm not used to living in a world where Voldemort isn't a threat to you. I've never done it before."

"Nor have I," agreed Lupin.

"Nor I, I suppose," said Harry.

"As to that." Sirius dropped the roll of parchment he'd been carrying in front of Harry. "As long as you're here, you might as well sign. The Ministry will want a member of the Wizengamot confirm that you are agreeable to the arrangements in person, though."

"What arrangements?" asked Harry.

Sirius nodded at the parchment. "Perhaps you should read it."

Harry was tired of reading in preparation for the OWLs and he didn't particularly feel like reading anything else, but he unrolled the parchment anyway. The words stood out boldly across the top.

**_Parental Responsibility Agreement for a Minor Witch or Wizard_ **

He looked at Sirius, who was toying with his wand.

"If you've changed your mind-" said Sirius.

"Don't be stupid, of course I haven't," said Harry. He skimmed the lengthy form and grabbed a quill to sign at the bottom where his name had been printed before turning to the next sheet of parchment.

**_Petition for Adoption of a Minor Witch or Wizard_ **

"Of course I'm not going to ask you to call me your father or to take my name," Sirius continued hastily. "You know perfectly well that all things considered I'd rather take your name. But-"

Harry signed as fast as he could so that Sirius would stop talking. He was surprised that he felt no surge of excitement. He had wanted this for so long, but he had been disappointed so many times…

"Can I be on the family tree at Grimmauld Place now?" he asked. He didn't know whether the question would make Sirius laugh or make him angry, but Harry figured that either way it would be better than Sirius being nervous.

As it happened, Sirius laughed. "Yes, I am looking forward to putting you on the tree." He glanced at Lupin. "Moony, too, as soon as he marries Tonks."

"She asked?" Harry wanted to know. "She said she was going to."

Lupin's lips quirked upward. "Yes, she asked. She told me that she'd told a number of people beforehand that I would have to explain myself if I said no."

"You were married before and you wanted to go back to her when you died," Harry pointed out. "Why would you say no?"

"I've made mistakes in the past," said Lupin so quietly that Sirius, who had been fidgeting with the signed rolls of parchment, became still. "I told her many times that I was too old for her, too poor for her, too sick and dangerous for her. After we were married, I left her. I told myself that I was protecting her."

Sirius' face was a mix of sympathy and disgust. Harry imagined that his own expression was similar. Lupin smiled at them both before continuing. "It took you, Harry, to make me see sense. I was grateful and I swore that I wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Of course, I nearly did. When I was in Azkaban, it crossed my mind… well, I rather thought that I wouldn't survive the last full moon. I wondered whether that would be a blessing for Dora. Whether that would let her be free from a helpless, broken, infamous werewolf. I did consider refusing to continue the relationship, but when I saw her… I managed to make a wiser decision this time."

"Good," said Harry, and he privately vowed not to tell Remus about Teddy anytime soon. He remembered Teddy's words.

_He has hope. And when he loses that hope, you will know what to say to him._

Lupin hadn't lost hope, and Harry certainly didn't know what to say that didn't carry the risk of convincing Lupin to abandon Tonks all over again. They'd both been miserable when they'd broken up the previous summer, and Harry wasn't interested in seeing a repeat performance of that.

"When's the wedding?" asked Harry.

"I don't know." Lupin pulled the adoption parchment out of Sirius' hand because Sirius was toying with it again and had waved it perilously close to a stack of the twins' love potions. "This summer, most likely, unless Dora decides that she wants a wedding so elaborate that it takes a year to plan."

"I think you're safe from that one, mate," said Sirius.

Harry nodded in agreement. He didn't know Tonks well, but he doubted that she had the patience to spend a year combing through bridal magazines when she could have been out catching dark wizards.

"Enough about me, anyway," said Lupin. "How are things at school, Harry? You must be a bit overwhelmed with the Quidditch finals and the OWLs coming up so soon."

Harry shrugged. "I've been having a hard time worrying about any of that."

"Have you been studying?"

"Yes," said Harry honestly. "Everyone is studying, so there's nothing else to do."

Sirius laughed. Lupin looked less amused. "How are Ron and Hermione? I'm surprised they didn't join you here today."

"They wanted to," said Harry. "They were worried about you. But I didn't know that you were here. I thought I would have to get Sirius to take me to London or Yorkshire or wherever, and we would have had a harder time getting Sirius to take all three of us."

"I would have done it," said Sirius, sounding almost put-out.

Lupin rolled his eyes. "Did you tell Ron and Hermione what happened?"

"Yeah." Harry twisted inside at the memory. Ron had been the perfect audience and had then been willing to change the subject to Quidditch, for which Harry had been extremely grateful. Hermione, on the other hand… "Hermione cried." It had been horribly awkward. "Why do girls cry?"

"She didn't give you any sort of a hint?" Lupin's tone was the same one he had used in his classroom when he wasn't ready to give the students the answer to a question until at least one person offered up a guess.

"She said it was awful that I could have died and she wouldn't even have been able to say goodbye. She said that she wouldn't have gone to see Krum in Bulgaria if she'd known."

In truth, Harry had known exactly why Hermione had cried. He just didn't want to experience anything like it ever again.

Sirius and Lupin exchanged an annoying, knowing sort of look. Harry didn't appreciate it. "You were worried that I might die, and you didn't cry," Harry told Sirius.

Sirius smiled sadly. "I cried for your father- for your parents- many times. I would have cried for you."

Harry didn't know how to respond to that. This was the last thing he wanted to discuss. It was worse than talking about Peter Pettigrew or Teddy Lupin.

Sirius and Lupin exchanged another annoying, knowing sort of look before Sirius stood up. "Let's go," he said to Harry.

"Go where?" asked Harry warily.

"To the Ministry," said Sirius as casually as if they had been planning this for ages. "We'll formalize this today and start acting like Voldemort is gone instead of talking about what it's like to know Voldemort is gone." He held out his hand, gesturing that Lupin should return the parchment Harry had signed.

Lupin pulled the parchment out of Sirius' reach. "May I make a suggestion?"

"No," said Sirius.

Lupin pretended not to hear him. "Formalize Harry's departure from school with Professor McGonagall. Don't start your new life off with what could technically be considered kidnapping."

Sirius sneered at Lupin, who looked less than impressed but handed the parchment to Sirius. "Let's go," said Sirius to Harry.

Harry's heart sped up. He wasn't sure whether they were going to go to Hogwarts or whether they were going to go straight to the Ministry and he didn't care.

* * *

It turned out that Sirius had listened to Lupin even if he had sneered at him. Even more oddly, Sirius allowed himself to be stopped at the front gate and ushered to McGonagall's office by a grumbling Filch. Sirius had entered Hogwarts grounds so many times without permission or announcement that Harry hadn't even considered that there was an official process for making a formal visit to the school. He hadn't ever bothered to listen when those rules were reviewed at the beginning of the school year. After all, it wasn't as if he expected to facilitate a visit from the Dursleys.

"I only have a moment before my next class," McGonagall called without looking up from the parchment she was reviewing.

"This shall only take a few seconds," said Sirius.

McGonagall's head snapped up so quickly that Harry would have laughed had he not been so suddenly full of nervous anticipation.

_I never have to go back to the Dursleys'. I'm going to live with Sirius for as long as I like. Sirius walked through the front door of the castle like any other parent instead of sneaking in like a fugitive. Things are going to be finalized at the Ministry._

Harry found himself looking forward to visiting the Ministry. He was even looking forward to adding his name to the family tree in Sirius' horrible family home.

"What are you doing here, Sirius?" asked McGonagall with a soft, affectionate look that always disconcerted Harry.

"I came for permission to remove Harry from school grounds this afternoon so that we can visit the Ministry and formalize my status as his guardian."

"Very well," said McGonagall crisply. Harry was glad that she didn't say anything about how wonderful it was that this was finally happening, or how pleased she was that things had changed enough that everyone agreed that it was safe for Harry to leave his relatives. "But Potter needs to check in with me personally when he returns. We need to have a conversation, Potter."

Harry nodded. He didn't know or care what the conversation was going to be about. Sirius was free; Sirius was about to become his legal guardian; Voldemort was dead. Even if McGonagall told him that he had been expelled- or, possibly worse, that he was no longer allowed to play Quidditch- Harry wouldn't mind.

* * *

Witches and wizards were streaming out of the Ministry when Harry and Sirius arrived. They were so focused on leaving the building behind that not one of them paused to gawk at Sirius, the famous Azkaban escapee, or did a double take upon catching a glimpse of Harry's scar.

"Are we too late?" Harry wondered.

"The Ministry isn't closed to the public yet, no matter how many of them are pretending that it is," said Sirius calmly. "We're better off catching them at the end of the day. They'll rush because they want to go home. No time to drag things out so they can tell their mates how they stamped the parchment that sent the Boy Who Lived home with his criminal godfather."

Harry liked that he and Sirius seemed to be thinking along the same lines. It was nice to be around an adult who understood him, and who understood the way the wizarding world worked, too.

They took the lift to Wizengamot Administration Services, which turned out to be located on the second floor of the massive building. Harry looked curiously at the array of papers which cluttered the table beside the information desk. There were copies of the _Daily Prophet_ and _Witch Weekly_ , but also advertisements for legal advice (apparently no one had ever offered one of those to Sirius) and lists of nearby restaurants.

He laughed at the map which featured directions to the ten establishments serving the ten best bacon sandwiches within easy Apparition distance. The back of the map listed hours of operation, whether the establishment was magical or Muggle, and a lengthy debate about the virtues of ketchup versus brown sauce.

Harry's personal opinion was that the best bacon sandwiches were the ones Mrs. Weasley made by the dozen when they were all in a rush to get out the door to meet the Hogwarts Express, but he couldn't help imagining how jealous Dudley would be if Harry mailed him a copy of the list and claimed to have tried every one.

"Take it," said Sirius, reading over his shoulder. "We'll need to celebrate somewhere once we're done here."

Harry folded the map and tucked it into the pocket of his robes. As he did, a grumpy, grey-haired wizard appeared at the information desk and told Sirius that all of the members of the Wizengamot had left for the day and that Sirius and Harry would have to come back tomorrow.

The map burned in Harry's pocket. They shouldn't even have joked about celebrating.

Sirius' posture shifted almost imperceptibly. "That's interesting, considering that the Amendment to the Statute for Magical Justice of 1992 states that one member of the Wizengamot will always be on call during normal business hours for vital but routine administrative services, on pain of a full investigation and possible demotion of those involved."

The elderly wizard's brow tightened and his mouth hung half open. "I'll go upstairs and check," he said sullenly.

"You do that," replied Sirius.

Harry glanced at the watch Sirius had given him for Christmas. The second hand hadn't even made one circuit around the face when the elderly wizard reappeared, followed by a square-jawed witch with close-cropped grey hair and a monocle. In a loud, booming voice, she introduced herself as Amelia Bones. She nodded to Sirius. "Mr. Black."

Sirius nodded back. "Madam Bones."

Then Madam Bones turned to Harry. "Mr. Potter. Do you understand the meaning behind the forms you signed this afternoon."

"Yes, Madam Bones," Harry said.

"You presently live with your aunt and uncle, is that correct?"

"Yes, when I'm not in school or visiting friends."

"Why do you wish to make such a significant change at this point in my life?"

"Because no one offered to let me make a change before this point in my life," Harry blurted out before wondering whether he ought to have been quite so honest. "My parents wanted me to be with my godfather. I want to be with my godfather."

"Do you feel safe with Mr. Black?"

The questioned annoyed Harry just as much as it had when Mrs. Weasley had asked it. "Yes."

"Very well," said Madam Bones. She waved her wand and the parchment began to glow. Her signature magically appeared beside Sirius' and Harry's before the parchment magically duplicated itself. One copy flew to sit atop a box beside the disgruntled elderly's wizard's desk; the other copy was returned to Sirius.

"Is that it?" Harry asked.

Madam Bones smiled. "If it were earlier in the day, I would have taken you into one of the meeting rooms so we could have had a ceremony in keeping with the significance of the occasion. As those rooms have been locked for the evening, I must settle for offering you my congratulations."

"Thank you," said Sirius and Harry together.

"There is no greater honor than properly uniting a family," said Madam Bones. "Best wishes to both of you." She looked a minute longer at Harry. "And best of luck on your OWLs."

"Thanks."

"My niece is in your year at Hogwarts. She's hardly been able to speak about anything else for months."

"Susan Bones?" asked Harry. "She's in my Herbology class." He wanted to say something nice about Susan, but all that came to mind was the way she had won a bet with Parvati and Lavender about whether Lupin and Tonks were dating. He didn't think that the stern-looking Madam Bones would be very impressed with that.

Madam Bones didn't seem to expect Harry to say anything more, though, and Sirius and Harry were soon on their way to the Kitchen Cafe, which was the only restaurant on Harry's map that was both open and fully magical. Sirius and Harry were dressed in robes that would have looked out of place in the Muggle world, and Harry didn't fancy violating the Statute of Secrecy on his first night as Sirius' legal son.

The Kitchen Cafe was very small and slightly dirty, but the food was the best that Harry had ever tasted.

But then, he reflected, anything would have tasted good when his heart was singing with the knowledge that he was really, truly free of the Dursleys.

* * *

Harry returned to Professor McGonagall's office as she had instructed. "Sit down, Potter," she said, and Harry did, suddenly realizing that he was quite tired. Had only a few hours passed since he'd gone to see Lupin and ended up at the Ministry with Sirius?

"How did your visit to the Ministry go?" asked McGonagall. "Were you able to get a member of the Wizengamot to finalize the guardianship papers?"

"Susan Bones' aunt."

"Amelia Bones handled the matter herself? Not that I'm surprised that she would do her share of on-duty work, but she is the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Harry wasn't surprised. Madam Bones had definitely been the sort of person who ought to have been in charge of something.

"Perhaps you'll feel it's too late for this question, but I need to ask you when your godfather isn't present. Is this was you truly want? A life as Sirius Black's heir and ward?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

"In my case, it's required, Potter. As your Head of House, I am sworn to make certain that any change in your living arrangements is free from coercion."

"I haven't been coerced!" Harry snapped. Mrs. Weasley didn't like Sirius; Amelia Bones didn't appear know Sirius, at least not very well. But he'd thought that Sirius had been one of Professor McGonagall's favorite students.

"I didn't believe that you had been."

"I wish someone had cared about whether I was happy to spend ten years with the Dursleys," Harry muttered. "Sirius could be as reckless and crazy and dangerous as everyone thinks he is, and he'd still be better than the Dursleys."

"I quite agree," said McGonagall. Her beady eyes were bright.

"Did you ever meet the Dursleys?" Harry asked curiously. Her underlying disgust told him that she probably had.

"I never precisely met them. I observed them on the day after your parents died. I… I asked Dumbledore whether there wasn't any other way, but he was insistent."

"He thought it was the only way I would be safe." Harry had heard this story before. He didn't like it, but he knew from experience that it wouldn't do to dwell on it. If he hadn't spent so much time dwelling on the decisions Dumbledore had made about his early childhood last year, Igor Karkaroff might never have been able to threaten Cedric and Ginny and Tonks.

"I'm happy for you and for Sirius," McGonagall continued. "Now that that's sorted, we need to have a discussion about your career development. The Headmaster asked that you be temporarily exempt because of certain… external demands on your time this spring."

"You mean that I needed to get rid of Voldemort so the Dursleys could get rid of me."

"None of it was ideal, but we cannot compound any errors we may have made by sending you into your sixth year without proper guidance."

Harry had steadfastly ignored the pamphlets that had littered the common room and had only half-listened when Hermione had chattered on about her plans to make a career out of SPEW. But he didn't think he'd needed to pay attention, anyway. "I've only really thought of being an Auror," he told McGonagall. "I've talked to Mad-Eye Moody and Tonks about it, and they told me I had to continue on with Potions whether I liked it or not. They said Snape only took people who got an O on their OWL into the NEWT-level class, but Professor Slughorn says he's sure I can do NEWT-level work. I don't think I'll have any problem continuing on with Charms, Defense, Herbology, or Transfiguration. Sirius said I should take the core classes at the NEWT level regardless because it was better to have qualifications I didn't need than to need qualifications I don't have."

Her mouth twisted and her brow creased. Harry was privately delighted that he had, however temporarily, rendered her speechless. "I'm pleased to see that you've put so much research into this. And even more pleased to see that your godfather has given you such good advice." She ran her finger down the edge of a square of parchment. "You're correct that you should have no trouble achieving the requisite qualifications in Defense and Charms. I've been more than satisfied with your work in Transfiguration since Sirius entered your life, but your performance has slipped in the past few months. As understandable as your reasons may be, that cannot continue."

Harry nodded. "It won't."

"Good. Spend your last few weeks of studying focused primarily on Potions, secondarily on Transfiguration and Herbology."

Harry nodded again. "I will."

"This will be the first and only time you will ever hear me suggest that you put Transfiguration second."

Harry grinned. For an instant, he was almost looking forward to the challenge of NEWT-level work. "I won't get used to it."

_**To be continued.** _


	86. Harry and the Secrets

During the last week in May, Harry was reminded over and over that the Quidditch Cup was Gryffindor's to defend. It was strange to think about it. The last Quidditch Cup might as well have taken place in another lifetime.

The last time Harry had flown in the championship match, he hadn't even met Sirius. Now he knew Sirius as well as he knew anyone in the world and was going to live with him.

The last time Harry had flown in the championship match, a tiny piece of Voldemort had flown with him. Now that was gone- and Voldemort was gone, too.

In stolen moments when Angelina wasn't frantically studying for her NEWTs (which somehow seemed to be even worse than OWLs), she was hollering at the team to be faster, stronger, and sharper. When she lost her voice and Madam Pomfrey instructed her to be absolutely quiet for two days, Harry sent an owl to Wood asking him to send a Howler pep talk by return owl.

Wood obliged him with three separate Howlers exhorting them to defend the Cup and remember that they had never been defeated when they all played together. The twins and Alicia and Katie laughed; even Angelina managed a smile. The Howlers seemed to break the tension, and their daily practices were a bit more pleasant from then on.

Their opponent was to be Ravenclaw. The two teams were close enough in the standings that everything was likely to come down to who caught the Snitch. That meant that, no matter how well everyone else played, the success of Gryffindor was really down to whether Harry could out-fly Cho Chang.

He knew that he could out-fly Cho.

The way Cho and her friends began gathering near him in the halls and giggling at least three times a day didn't mean that he couldn't out-fly Cho.

He was used to the Slytherins' tactic of threatening to hex him in the corridors. He didn't know quite what to do with Cho's tactic of gamesmanship by giggling.

Sometimes the laughing crowd of girls did include half a dozen Slytherins. That made sense; Slytherin would surely prefer a Ravenclaw victory to a Gryffindor victory. And Cho was so enormously popular that she no doubt had friends from every house. Harry smiled as he remembered Lupin telling him that the same had been true of Lily Evans.

One of the Slytherin girls returned his smile and raised her eyebrow. Belatedly, he recognized Stephanie Wheeler. Perhaps when the Cup had been won and the OWLs were over, they would duel again.

* * *

The weather was perfect on the day of the Quidditch final. Cho's shiny black hair rippled in the slight breeze as she talked animatedly to Ravenclaw's captain, Roger Davies.

The last time Harry had flown against Cho, she'd decided to mark him rather than search for the Snitch herself. Harry was prepared this time; he knew that his Firebolt was much faster than Cho's Comet. He would be able to lose her any time he liked.

Lee Jordan's magically amplified voice announced the Ravenclaw team first. They circled the field to raucous applause from the all of the Ravenclaws and Slytherins, and some of the Hufflepuffs, too.

_"And for the defending champion Gryffindor, you know them already- Johnson, Spinnet, Bell, Potter, Weasley, Weasley, and Weasley!"_

Harry grinned. He had won the Cup before, but he had never won it with his best friend. He slapped Ron on the back before getting into position to get a good view of the Snitch as it was released.

On such a clear, beautiful day, it ought to have taken Harry about five minutes to catch the Snitch.

Instead, he found himself circling the pitch helplessly as Roger Davies scored the first goal.

"Roger has excellent form, doesn't he?" a voice said in his ear. It was Cho, of course. She had decided to shadow him again.

Gryffindor's chasers retaliated by luring Davies into Parkin's Pincer, a brutal move that involved two chasers pigeonholing the opposing player while the third chaser- in this case, Angelina- flew at top speed into the victim. Davies nearly tumbled from his broom, and Angelina scooped up the Quaffle and flung it through the left hoop from halfway across the pitch.

"Roger will be all right," Cho breathed in his ear. "He's strong."

Harry didn't say anything in response. He looked for the Snitch; after failing to find it, he decided that it was time for a Wronski Feint. If Cho crashed into the grass below… well, that was Quidditch. And to hear her tell it, Davies would probably rescue her.

He heard the crowd gasp and scream as he dove faster, faster toward the earth.

 _"Potter's spotted the Snitch!"_ Lee exclaimed. _"Another championship for Gryffindor- it's all over-"_

Harry pulled up at the last possible second.

 _"False alarm,"_ came Lee's commentary. _"That was a Wronski Feint from Potter. Chang hit the ground, but she's recovered her balance and flying back toward Potter. You'd think a Ravenclaw might be able to think for herself rather than follow the opposing player around all day, but Chang-"_

" _Jordan_ !" warned Professor McGonagall's magically amplified voice. Harry grinned. It wasn't a Quidditch match until McGonagall threatened Lee with detention.

_"Just telling it like it is, Professor. Chang is back to shadowing Potter. Neither one of them has spotted the Snitch, but only one of them is actually trying. Meanwhile, clear shot at the goal for Katie Bell, but- ouch, that Bludger must have hurt, not such a clear shot after all…"_

"Lee Jordan is very funny, isn't he?" Cho was back. There were new grass stains on her uniform where she'd hit the ground, but she seemed unhurt. "I enjoy his commentary even when he's having a go at me. I used to have a crush on him back when I was in my second or third year."

Harry really didn't want to know anything about who Cho had had a crush on when she'd been a third year. He accelerated, knowing that Cho couldn't keep pace with him. He couldn't search for the Snitch at that speed, though, so he had to slow his pace and resume searching.

"The acceleration on that Firebolt is amazing!" said Cho once she'd caught up to him. "Would you let me have a go on it sometime? Before tryouts next year, maybe? Gryffindor's going to have to replace four positions. Three, I guess, I assume Ginny Weasley already has one of the chaser spots? I've seen her fly in practice. I think she's better than any of her brothers, don't you?"

In fact, Harry did think that, but now was hardly the time to discuss it with Cho. Or with anyone, really, because it felt disloyal to Ron to point out that his younger sister was a better Quidditch player than he was. This was meant to be the day that he and Ron held the Cup up between them before they stayed up all night eating too much food and reliving the moment over and over.

"Just one go on the Firebolt?" Cho wheedled. "Courtesy between captains and all. Just between us, I already know I'll be Ravenclaw's captain next year. Has McGonagall told you that you're it for Gryffindor? I know Katie's older, but you're a much stronger player. Katie's only as good as she is because of her chemistry with Alicia and Angelina. Cedric's promised to give me some advice on running tryouts. Do you want to join us? I'm sure he'd be happy to talk to you, too. No? Well, send one of us an owl this summer if you change your mind."

They crossed the pitch for what felt like the thousandth time.

"I've never had an official leadership position before," Cho continued. "I don't think I'd want one other than Quidditch Captain. I don't know who the Head Girl and Head Boy will be next year, do you? Sometimes it's so obvious, like it was with Cedric. If it were me, I think I'd pick Stephanie Wheeler for Head Girl. You know my friend Stephanie, right?"

Harry spun to avoid a Bludger. He hadn't had to do that much this match; the Ravenclaws didn't want to risk hitting their own Seeker by accident.

"Stephanie's in Slytherin so I don't see her all the time, but she's good friends with my roommate Lyssa. They grew up down the street from each other. Stephanie's really into magizoology, has she told you? Especially water creatures. Kelpies, things like that. I think the main reason she wanted to be in Slytherin was because she likes to be able to watch the giant squid from their common room. It's romantic, in a way, having the common room under the lake like that."

Harry thought the Slytherin common room felt like a dungeon and he was glad that he didn't have to live there.

"So next time you duel Stephanie, make sure it's not underwater. She'd definitely beat you," Cho concluded.

There was a roar from the crowd. Ron had made an unlikely save. Both of the keepers were playing exceptionally well. There was no chance that the match would be decided by anything but Harry or Cho catching the Snitch.

"Stephanie said that if you wanted to ask her out, she wouldn't say no."

After an hour's non-stop chatter in his ear, Harry finally gave up. "Are you trying to annoy me into letting you catch the Snitch just so the match will be over?" he asked.

Cho winked at him cheekily. "Of course. Your broom is better than mine. You're a better flier than I am anyway. This is my team's only chance at winning, so I'm swallowing my pride and taking it."

He hadn't expected such brutal honesty, although he supposed that it hadn't been much of a secret. Everyone in the stands, as well as every player on both teams, had been able to see what Cho was doing.

Just then, a Bludger hit Cho in the chest and nearly knocked her from her broom. "Less chatting, more seeking, Harry!" Fred yelled. "I'd like to be able to open my shop at the end of the month, and I can't do that if we're still stuck here because you haven't caught the Snitch."

Harry made a rude gesture at Fred's retreating back and redoubled his efforts. He flew behind Ron just as Ron made another spectacular save.

"Good one!" yelled Harry.

"End this!" yelled Ron, panting from exertion.

And that was when Harry saw the Snitch hovering just below the center hoop. He snatched it from the air and held it above his head.

"Since you asked nicely," he told Ron. Ron's eyes widened as he realized what had happened, and he flung his arms around Harry. Five more solid thumps followed as their teammates reached them, and they drifted to the ground in a tight huddle.

 _"GRYFFINDOR WINS! GRYFFINDOR WINS!"_ Lee was shouting, but Harry could hardly hear him as he and his teammates lifted the Cup above their heads.

 _"And that's a happy ending for Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Alicia Spinnet, and Captain Angelina Johnson. And for yours truly, too. It's been a pleasure being your quidditch commentator these last five years,"_ Lee signed off.

The team that would defend the Cup next year would be made up of almost entirely new players. Harry had been the youngest member of the team for as long as he'd played. He didn't want to see the others go, but he couldn't wait to fly with Ginny…

"Well done, Potter," said Professor McGonagall, who looked as happy as any of them that they had won. "I thought that you were about to make a misguided attempt to avoid your OWLs by letting the match last for three weeks."

"Could that really happen?" asked Harry.

"I advise you not to attempt to find out."

Harry and Ron did celebrate all night. After that, they resumed studying.

* * *

The OWLs passed in a blur. When they were finally finished, Harry was cautiously optimistic that he had done as well as he needed to do.

* * *

The morning after he had completed his final OWL- he would be happy to be free of History of Magic next year- he received a square of parchment informing him that his _presence was requested in the Headmaster's office at his earliest convenience._

"I thought you were done with all of that," said Ron, casually reading the note over Harry's shoulder.

"So did I," said Harry. He wasn't certain how he felt about the Dumbledore's message. He wanted the part of his life that had revolved around Voldemort to be over. But he would miss being special to Dumbledore, would miss their occasional chats that had made the world feel both mysterious and wonderful.

The door to Dumbledore's office stood open. Dumbledore smiled in greeting as Harry arrived. With one hand, Dumbledore gestured that Harry should sit down; with the other, he gave a wave of his wand, which caused the door to close and lock itself.

"How did you find your OWLs?" Dumbledore asked.

"Some better than others," said Harry honestly. He was slightly concerned about Potions and Herbology, but he was almost certain that he had achieved an Outstanding in Defense.

Dumbledore chuckled. "I suppose that's true for all of us."

"Professor Marchbanks mentioned that he examined you when you were in school. He said you did things with a wand that he'd never seen before."

"That's not necessarily a positive assessment," said Dumbledore. "I only once saw a student coat the entire Great Hall in pink candy floss, but as he was attempting to Summon a glass of water, his examination was not strictly considered to be a success. General consensus was that candy floss was not nearly sweet enough."

Harry laughed. He didn't know whether Dumbledore had made up the story, and he didn't care.

"I did not, however, ask you here to discuss your OWLs. Unless you have any particular questions?"

Harry shook his head. "No, Sir."

"Are you not going to ask why I did ask you to meet with me?"

"I thought that you wold tell me when you were ready, Sir."

Harry worried for an instant that Dumbledore would think that his answer was more cheeky than he had intended it to be. But though Dumbledore sighed, he did not seem upset. "That has always been the way with us, hasn't it, Harry? I've meted out my thoughts to you in the smallest of portions and left you with unanswered questions. When your godfather and Professor Lupin came into your life, they were much more straightforward with you and perhaps that changed the way you viewed me."

"I did appreciate learning the truth," admitted Harry. The specter of Teddy Lupin, grinning like Tonks in bright Hufflepuff robes, raced through his mind. "But I understand," he told Dumbledore. "It's hard to know what to tell someone, and when. You know they'd want to know, but you don't want to hurt them when they aren't- aren't ready for the pain."

"You're very wise, Harry. I hope you never forget that when Quidditch and examinations and friendships and fugitive godfathers and reporters from the _Daily Prophet_ are swirling around you."

"Thank you, Sir."

"It is I who should be thanking you, Harry. You did a brave and beautiful thing when you trusted Professor Snape to resurrect Voldemort and allow him to confront you a final time. You saved many lives at the risk of your own, and very few of those you protected will ever know what they owe you. I am among the lucky few who does know, and so I would be remiss if I didn't offer you a token of my gratitude."

Harry wondered what a token of gratitude from the most powerful wizard who had ever lived might look like. Knowing Dumbledore, it could be anything from a box of Every Flavor Beans to his own invisible castle.

As if reading Harry's thoughts- Harry _really_ hoped that Dumbledore wasn't reading his thoughts- Dumbledore offered Harry a chocolate frog. "I could give you something material to mark the occasion, of course. But you have a godfather who spoils you with racing brooms and gold cauldrons. You have dear friends who know what you like best. So what I will offer you instead is something that you have craved from me. Honesty. A secret. Not a secret about you this time. A secret about me."

Harry had never seen Dumbledore speak so seriously, not even when they were discussing life and death.

"Tell me, Harry, have you ever heard the story of the three brothers? Or, perhaps, the Deathly Hallows? Have you ever wondered why your father's Invisibility Cloak was in my possession at the time of his death?"

Harry could feel his eyes widening behind his glasses.

"The story begins with my younger sister. Ariana was a beautiful girl, and bursting at the seems with magic. When she was six years old, she was practicing magic in the back garden…"

* * *

For over an hour, Harry sat silent and listened while Dumbledore spoke about his family and his quest to unite the Hallows.

"They do exist, you see," said Dumbledore. "My wand. Your family's cloak. And unless I am very much mistaken, the resurrection stone is concealed in the ring Sirius found last year. I don't believe that Sirius knows what he has."

"He doesn't," agreed Harry. If Sirius had known, he would have called for Harry's parents. He wouldn't have been able to resist, even knowing the story that warned that the resurrection stone would only pull an unhappy shadow back to the land of the living.

"Will you tell him?" asked Dumbledore.

"Yes," said Harry firmly. Sirius didn't lie to him. He wouldn't lie to Sirius. "I'll tell him and I'll ask him to let me destroy it before it hurts him or someone else."

"Would you be willing to let me study it first?"

"Would you try to resurrect Ariana?"

"I would not. I will not disturb Ariana's peace in death at it was disturbed in life. I am an old man. I imagine that I will see her soon enough as it is."

Harry swallowed hard, and nodded. "I… I mean, there's no need to make it sooner than it has to be, is there? When I saw my parents- when Voldemort tried to kill me at Easter- the last thing my dad said to me was not to be in any rush even though they're waiting for me. I reckon Ariana would feel the same way, wouldn't she? She knows how many children you've helped by being the sort of Headmaster you are…"

Dumbledore's eyes were bright with tears. "I'm proud that you still believe, knowing what you do, that I have done more good than harm as Headmaster."

"Of course you have!" Harry exploded. Some of the portraits of former headmasters stopped pretending to be asleep and voiced their agreement.

"I don't agree with everything you do, Dumbledore," drawled Phineas Nigellus Black, "but you mustn't be so maudlin. You've been spending too much time with adolescents again."

Dumbledore looked at the portrait with amusement. "That _is_ my job, Phineas."

"Horrid job. It's a wonder anyone wants it," muttered Phineas Nigellus before resuming his pretended rest.

"Forgive me my maudlin moment, Harry," said Dumbledore, and his eyes were clear and twinkling again. "And forgive me, perhaps, someday, the position in which I placed you the moment I bound you to your aunt's blood. I know what it is to know that the world is counting on you when you aren't certain that you have anything to offer. I would not have lain that burden on your shoulders if I had believed that there was another choice."

"I understand," said Harry, and the knot of annoyance that had been building in his chest ever since people had begun asking him whether he felt safe living with Sirius suddenly unraveled.

* * *

That afternoon, Harry went to the library and sought out a copy of _Tales of Beedle the Bard_ . Madam Pince eyed him suspiciously and told him that students who had completed their examinations had no business in the library.

"I'm studying for next year's examinations," Harry told her, and she couldn't prove that it wasn't true. He pored over the book and found that he rather preferred Dumbledore's oral version of the story to the written version. Still, he wondered what Dumbledore had done, or had planned to do, with his invisibility cloak. He left the book in the library and headed back to Dumbledore's office with the cloak in his hand, vaguely planning to ask Dumbledore to show him how he had realized that this cloak was the one from the story.

It was only when he was halfway up Dumbledore's winding staircase that he remembered that this time he had not been invited. Dumbledore was not alone. A shiver ran down his spine when he realized that Dumbledore was speaking to none other than Snape.

Harry dropped the cloak over his head and stood out of the way to listen. He knew that he shouldn't eavesdrop, but the door was open, and Dumbledore had demonstrated that very morning that he was perfectly capable of closing it…

 _"And if things work out as we expect them to, it will only be a matter of what you would like, Severus,"_ Dumbledore was saying. _"Let me offer you a choice: Potions or Defense Against the Dark Arts?"_

Harry cringed. He had held out some hope that Lupin would be able to resume teaching Defense when the new term began in autumn. So many of the students supported him, and Umbridge's law could be repealed just as easily as it had been put in place.

" _Neither_ ," snarled Snape. _"My debt is as paid as it will ever be."_

 _"Your debt is paid in full,"_ said Dumbledore gently. _"I thought perhaps that you might choose teaching, now, rather than viewing it as an unfortunate side effect of some of your more noble life goals."_

 _"Choose teaching?"_ Snape laughed, and Harry heard the echo of another laugh- that of Phineas Nigellus. _"I don't like teaching and I don't like most children any more than I like most adults."_

 _"Very well, Severus."_ Dumbledore sounded disappointed. Harry wasn't disappointed at all. _"I will consider you to be on sabbatical for the next year. If in that time you change your mind, Hogwarts will welcome you home."_

_"I shan't change my mind."_

_"Then Hogwarts will still welcome you home when you're ready."_

Harry decided that it was best to leave the area before Snape stormed out of the office in a fit of aggravation.

* * *

The closing feast that year was like none Harry had ever known. Cornelius Fudge sat at the high table with the teachers just as he had the year before, but this year he was accompanied by Umbridge rather than by the heads of the other magical schools.

Every one of the professors- even Snape, who apparently had no plans to return to Hogwarts in the autumn- glared openly at Umbridge. Fudge shifted nervously in his seat, as if Umbridge's unpopularity might rub off on him.

As the last of the students settled into their seats, Dumbledore rose from his. The Great Hall was suddenly silent with anticipation. Harry didn't know quite what they were anticipating, but he knew that it was _something_ .

Dumbledore's gaze seemed to take in everything that surrounded him. "Another year at Hogwarts has come and gone," he began. "I hope that you have learned many things inside your classroom, and that your lessons outside the classroom have been just as magical. I, myself, have learned a great deal from my colleagues and my students in the past few days alone. I have learned much about what is truly important and how very often we have the power to choose even when we feel as though we do not. That is why I am taking this opportunity to resign my position as the Headmaster of Hogwarts."

There was a groaning, shrieking roar from the student body. Harry felt his own voice joining them.

"It was supposed to be Snape leaving," Ron groaned in Harry's ear. Harry had, of course, told Ron and Hermione everything he'd overheard.

"Did talking to Snape make Dumbledore think it was time for him to leave, too?" Hermione theorized anxiously. "Who will be the new Headmaster? McGonagall wouldn't be too bad, but what if Fudge and Umbridge are planning-"

Fudge stood up. "Really, Dumbledore, is this the time to make such an announcement?"

Dumbledore nodded gravely at Fudge. "I'm afraid it is, Minister Fudge. I have been the only headmaster that these students have ever known. It is right that they should hear the news from me, and this is my last chance to address them before they flee to all corners of the world for their summer holidays. But I know that you and Undersecretary Umbridge had an announcement that you wished to make as well, and so I yield my place to you."

Umbridge leapt to her feet. "Hem hem." The faculty was still glaring at her; so, too, were the students. Unlike Fudge, she did not seem to notice or care. "As you children well know, this year I have conducted an extensive evaluation of your school in order to make certain that you are not only given the best education in the world, but that you are kept safe. And indeed, it has been the great triumph of my career to remove a monstrous beast from your midst."

The students began to boo openly. Harry joined in as loudly as he could. A storm cloud materialized above Umbridge's head and began to pelt her with sleet and hail.

Dumbledore waited for a long, long moment before he murmured a spell that made the storm cloud vanish.

"That was a lovely piece of charmwork," he said vaguely. "But please allow the Undersecretary to complete her announcement."

 _"It was not a lovely piece of charmwork,"_ Umbridge said. She was dripping wet and shaking with cold. None of the professors had bothered to dry her off, nor had Fudge. Harry had no idea why she didn't simply do it herself. Perhaps she was too angry to realize that she could.

Perhaps she couldn't. He wasn't certain that he recalled ever seeing Umbridge perform complicated magic.

"What my evaluation of the school has revealed is that you children are sorely lacking in discipline. You may not realize it now, but when you are adults, which you will be all too soon, no one is going to laugh when you throw Every Flavor Beans at them from the top of a staircase. There will be repercussions when you speak out of turn and fail to respect your betters."

 _"Who are our betters?"_ Lee Jordan screamed.

"Silence!" snapped Umbridge. "It may be too late for you, Mr. Jordan, but this school requires a new headmaster and the faculty must be supervised more closely by the Ministry."

That was when the faculty rose in perfect unison.

"The Ministry will be able to choose its own faculty," said Professor McGonagall crisply.

"We will all be resigning with the Headmaster," said Snape. He offered his arm to McGonagall. She took it, beaming, and they strolled out of the Great Hall in lockstep, followed by the rest of the teachers. Some were solemn, but others were unsuccessfully hiding smiles.

"Really, Dumbledore," said Fudge, sounding flustered. "Is this necessary?"

"I'm only attempting to support you, Minister Fudge," said Dumbledore. "Your report has revealed that I have not run this school appropriately."

"Well," stammered Fudge. "Not precisely _my_ report."

An exaggerated expression of confusion crossed Dumbledore's face. "Then perhaps you must clarify for me. I am an old man and sometimes I do misunderstand things. My belief was that you accepted the recommendations of Undersecretary Umbridge that the school is in need of greater Ministry oversight and that the Ministry must approve of the staff. If that is the case, the staff and I have decided to allow you to make a clean start. If, on the other hand, you believe that the investigation revealed no major concerns and that I am still capable of choosing my own staff…"

"Of course," said Fudge hastily.

"Then I apologize for the confusion." Dumbledore smiled out at the students. "I am afraid that I will still be your headmaster next year, and I daresay that most of your professors will be returning as well."

There was a collective whoop of joy as food appeared on the tables. Harry piled his plate high with lamb chops and roasted potatoes, but he hardly tasted them as he focused all his attention on Umbridge. She seemed to shrink before his very eyes as, one by one, the professors returned from wherever they had been. Fudge was no longer fidgeting with nervousness; indeed, he was no longer paying Umbridge any attention at all. Instead, he was chatting a bit too jovially with Dumbledore.

Harry waited for Umbridge to make her escape. She never did. She only sat silently, alone in the happy crowd.

If it had been anyone else, he would have felt sorry for her.

As the meal concluded, the Weasley twins let off what seemed like thousands of fireworks. In what Harry could only assume had been a last minute change, some of the fireworks spelled out _**we love Hogwarts and Dumbledore.** _

"Come visit us at our new premises on Diagon Alley next week!" shouted Fred.

"But don't use them to disrupt anyone's education in a well-run school!" added George.

Everyone but Umbridge laughed.

* * *

Harry had one more thing to do before he left Hogwarts for the last time as a fifth-year student. That evening, he sat in the Common Room, pleasantly full of food. Ron was soundly defeating Hermione in a game of chess. The twins were loudly explaining that their original exit plans had been much more dramatic but that they hadn't wanted to encourage Fudge to take sides with Umbridge against Dumbledore, as they didn't think Fudge had much of a sense of humor. The other Gryffindors were making last minute plans for holiday visits and saying goodbye to one another.

But Harry had a letter to write.

_Dear Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia,_

_You do not have to pick me up at King's Cross Station when the Hogwarts Express arrives. Sirius has officially adopted me so I will never come to live with you again._

_Harry_

**_To be continued._ **


	87. The Wedding Plan

_Our Children Deserve a Safe Education_

_by Lucius Malfoy_

_Our children should be able to attend school without risking assault from their teachers._

_Our children should be able to attend school without the risk of being infected with an incurable disease._

_Our children should be able to attend school without being exposed to unrestrained beasts which experts have called "murderous" and "wizard killers."_

_All of these statements were completely uncontroversial during my years on the Hogwarts Board of Governors. I, along with my colleagues, fought to ensure that students' education could be as safe as possible. On occasion, this meant removing dangerous magical creatures from the grounds._

_In recent months, I have grown more and more concerned by the frequently-voiced opinion that students at Hogwarts- the shining jewel of British magical education- would benefit from the renewed professorship of the werewolf Remus Lupin._

_A significant portion of the Hogwarts student body has written letters to this very publication on behalf of Mr. Lupin. To this, I say that children have parents because children lack the experience to survive in the world on their own. Students should not be granted the right to choose their teachers any more than they should be granted the right to Apparate at the age of six or order firewhiskey at the age of four._

_It seems that Mr. Lupin made a positive impression on a great many students. Many men who make a positive impression on children intend to do them harm. Fenrir Greyback is said to be beloved by the children he raises as his own after he renders them unable to live with their parents and siblings. Fenrir Greyback is also responsible for the murders of at least forty children and the maiming of many more._

_Even assuming that Mr. Lupin is, in fact, an excellent teacher, I note that there are many excellent teachers who would jump at the chance to work at Hogwarts. An excellent teacher is not so rare an occurrence that he should be paid with the blood of one child, let alone the blood of forty children._

_I urge my fellow Hogwarts parents to make their voices heard should the Headmaster and the current Board of Governors consider reinstating Mr. Lupin._

Remus reread the letter for the fourth time. Dora hadn't given it to him when she'd given him the letter written by his former students. He'd found it by accident beneath a stack of books. While the letter was actually more restrained than he would have expected from Lucius Malfoy, it did stir up an abundance of old feelings, none of them pleasant.

Presently Dora appeared beside him. Her hair was her favorite bubblegum pink, and she was dressed casually in trainers and a Weird Sisters t-shirt.

"Are you still brooding over that?" she asked.

"You might have read it months ago, but I've only had since this morning to contemplate it."

"I held back from showing it to you because I thought you would sulk. Clearly I was wrong."

Remus ignored her sarcasm. "Everyone reads his or her own press. It's a compulsion. Don't you read everything the Daily Prophet prints about the Auror Department?"

"I only do that because Mad-Eye might quiz me. It's self-preservation, not a compulsion." She punctuated her declaration with a sweeping gesture that made her engagement ring flash in the morning sunlight.

She rarely wore the ring, not out of any dislike, but because she went undercover often and didn't want to risk losing it or identifying herself. It always delighted him when she did wear it. He hadn't expected himself to be so old-fashioned as to enjoy seeing a physical symbol scream that Dora was _taken_ and _his_ , but it seemed that he was.

Dora noticed his gaze. "I'm off today and tomorrow," she said, suddenly more quiet and less brash. "Not even on call. First time in ages."

"I know."

"I'd almost like to go in. The rumor is that Fudge is demoting Umbridge today, and I'm going to be so disappointed if I'm not there to watch. Do you think they'll make her mop the Ministry floors like her dad did?"

"I think Dolores Umbridge always lands on her feet."

"You think she likes cats so much she's turned into one?"

"I think that she is too skilled to allow a minor setback like her failed takeover of Hogwarts to keep her down for long."

Dora lowered her voice in the way that one did when one was gossiping viciously. "They say Fudge is furious. Fudge doesn't really like Dumbledore- feels threatened by him- but he doesn't really care about Hogwarts one way or other. He wants to be the longest-serving Minister of Magic ever, they say. Dumbledore is popular, so Fudge will side with Dumbledore when Dumbledore wants full control over the school. He's swearing he knew nothing about Umbridge's plans, that he didn't really think the school needed inspecting in the first place."

"It's interesting." Remus glanced around even though he knew that they were alone in Dora's flat. "Dumbledore had lost a great deal of popularity at this time… well, before. He insisted that Voldemort had returned and the Ministry insisted that he was a liar." Remus shuddered inwardly at the memory. "I'm glad Harry won't have to suffer through that."

"Because of you. Because you did a wonderful thing. And maybe one more outcome of that wonderful thing will be Dolores Umbridge mopping floors!" She smiled gleefully. "You're sure you don't want to come to the Ministry today?"

"I'm certain."

"Isn't it time for me to meet your dad, then?"

She'd lured him into a false sense of security with her talk of Umbridge mopping floors. He didn't have a single excuse for putting off the meeting between his wife and his father. He'd promised her. He'd promised her in this world, and he'd promised her on the day of his death in the other world.

"Is it me you're ashamed of, or him?" Dora prompted.

Remus laughed. "Neither."

"Then why are you nervous?"

"There's a… distance between my father and me that I don't think you'll understand. He would never hurt me or disown me the way the Blacks did your mother and Sirius. But we don't have the rapport that you have with Andromeda and Ted. We never will."

Dora shrugged, as if she didn't find his concern worthy of further discussion. "Are you ready to go, or do you need to read Uncle Lucius' letter a few dozen more times?"

_"Uncle Lucius?"_

"I was trying something out." She twisted her face into a gruesome expression of distaste. "I don't think I'll try it again."

"If you do decide to say it to his face, I'd like to watch," he said wryly.

She kissed him lightly on the lips. "You can watch me do anything you'd like." With that, she snatched the _Daily Prophet_ from his hand. "Get ready."

* * *

As with so many things that had happened in the past three years the anticipation proved far worse than the reality. Dora instantly dissolved the awkwardness in the room, her total lack of self-consciousness neatly canceling out Remus and Lyall's over-abundance of self-consciousness.

It made sense, really. Dora was perfectly well aware that families came in all shapes and sizes. Her mother was a disowned pureblood heiress. Her father was Muggle-born, as she quickly explained to Lyall.

"When I was very young and I couldn't control my morphing, my parents had to hide me from the Muggle world because there are things about me that can't be explained. Since my dad's family was all Muggle, sometimes we just couldn't see them at all," she said. Hope Lupin's ring glinted on her finger. Lyall looked at it just as Remus had earlier that morning.

"I'm afraid of Remus knows that feeling all too well," he told Dora. "For the first few years we were able to hide his magic from Hope's extended family, but one year Christmas fell just after the full moon and he was covered with cuts that we couldn't heal, and too tired to make the journey in any event."

"I'm sorry," said Dora.

"So am I," said Lyall. "That ring suits you well. You have just the zest for life that Hope had."

"Thank you."

"Give me a moment. I have something for you."

Remus could hardly hide his surprise when Lyall returned an instant later. In his hand was a gold necklace. Dangling from the chain was a Muggle coin dated 1874. The coin had been a gift from Hope's father to her mother; Lyall had had it set and strung. It was one of few pieces of valuable jewelry Hope had owned after the Lupins had begun to spend all of their finances traveling the world in search of a cure for Remus.

Hope had worn the necklace often. If asked, Remus would have thought that she'd been buried with it.

"This belonged to Hope," said Lyall, as he held the necklace out to Dora. "I see that you're wearing her ring. I'd like you to have another piece of her, because she would have adored you. I imagine that it's too old-fashioned for your usual taste-"

"It's beautiful," said Dora. "I'll wear it in trust for the daughter Remus and I will have one day." She cut her eyes sideways to Remus. They had discussed Teddy several times; they had never discussed the idea of having other children. "Or our granddaughter, if we only have a son."

"You've decided that you want children, then?" asked Lyall hesitantly.

"Yes," said Dora, as if this was in no way a loaded question.

"I was concerned about passing along the werewolf curse-"

"Except that's not how it works," interrupted Dora. "You aren't going to bite our children. They'll be fine."

"Precisely how many children are we going to have?" Remus wondered.

Dora was unconcerned. "We'll start with one and reevaluate after a year."

She sounded like an Auror's training manual.

It wasn't strictly unattractive.

"We'd like to get married this summer," said Dora smoothly. "It's rather soon, so we need to make sure that we have your blessing and that there isn't any date that will stop you coming."

"No date could stop me coming," said Lyall. "Choose a date and I will be there. Not that you need my blessing, but you have it." He looked again at the necklace, which Dora had draped around her neck. "I know that Hope would have given you her blessing, too."

* * *

They Apparated straight to Dora's parents' house. Remus hadn't seen Andromeda and Ted since his release from Azkaban. He knew that they wouldn't object to Dora's choice- he knew that they knew that objecting to Dora's choice would have done them no good-but he was looking forward to this conversation even less than he had looked forward to the conversation with his own father.

He wasn't going to attempt to convince Dora that she might being ruining her life by bonding herself to him. He'd tried that and it had failed. He wasn't going to run away from Dora and leave her not choice but to build a life without him. He'd tried that, too, and it had failed. But there remained a certain lingering guilt that he could do something so self-centered as consign Dora to the unenviable position of a werewolf's wife. This time he didn't even have the excuse of the heightened emotions of war.

Hope's coin had fallen beneath Dora's t-shirt, but Andromeda nonetheless noticed the necklace right away. Dora told her mother the necklace's history with great enthusiasm.

"That's a very special gift," said Andromeda. "Something that's been a part of so many generations." She looked incredibly sad as she said it, and a look passed between mother and daughter that Remus didn't quite understand.

Remus thought that Ted understood the unspoken exchange and didn't like it at all. "So tell us what you've decided about the wedding," said Ted rather abruptly.

Remus had never even thought about the details. Their wedding had been a non-event the first time around. "I consider myself lucky to be marrying Dora," he said. "It doesn't matter how."

Both Ted and Andromeda nodded approvingly. Dora rolled her eyes. "I think we should have a huge wedding. I'll invite everyone I've ever met, and that way I'll know who the bigots are if anyone objects."

Remus was torn between being glad that Dora actually recognized that bigotry was a valid concern and guilty that Dora wanted to expose herself to that sort of ridicule.

"If you want to be married this summer, you might not be able to invite everyone you know," said Andromeda gently. "A wedding on that scale takes at least a year to plan."

Dora wrinkled her nose. "That sounds dull," she decided. "And Tulip's wedding was too big. She didn't have time to see any of her friends." She looked sharply at Remus. "I want lots of food and lots of music and hardly any ceremony."

"Agreed," he said, and he meant it even if he would have happily gone along with a wedding that had no food and no music and rather too much ceremony.

"I happen to know that Kingsley is authorized to officiate at weddings," she went on. "You like Kingsley. Would that be all right with you?"

"Kingsley might not want to be known as the person who married his colleague to a werewolf," said Remus as delicately as he could.

"And if that's how he feels, I want to know about it. Do you like him?"

"You know I like him."

"I want Tulip as my matron of honor and Penny as my maid of honor, of course. I know you want Sirius as best man. And- Harry, because James isn't here?"

Remus nodded, his throat temporarily too tight to allow him to speak.

"There," said Dora. "The wedding's mostly planned already. We just need to tell the wedding party they have jobs. I'll owl Penny and Tulip and see if they can meet us at Marquelle tonight."

* * *

Remus had heard Dora talk about Marquelle- it was her favorite club- but he had never visited before.

As soon as she pulled him inside, he knew that he liked it. He was, as always, aware that if someone recognized him as a werewolf there might be trouble. He was also aware that he was too old to be spending his evening in a place like this.

But he liked it.

He liked the mixture of magical and Muggle lighting, sound, and clothing. It was a true meeting of the worlds that didn't view either as an oddity or something to be pitied.

Of course it would be Dora's favorite place.

"You love it, don't you?" she asked.

"I really do."

They looked around and discerned that neither Tulip nor Penny had arrived yet. Dora laced her fingers through Remus' as she leaned over and made a request of the bartender. The bartender nodded, and in a moment the music changed.

"This is where I cried over you when you went to Azkaban," said Dora. "I dreamed of dancing with you here, to this song."

"Then we'll dance," agreed Remus.

_I step off the train_

_I'm walking down your street again_

_And past your door_

_But you don't live there anymore_

_It's years since you've been there_

_And now you've disappeared somewhere_

_Like outer space_

_You've found some better place_

_And I miss you_

_Like the deserts miss the rain…_

Remus couldn't help but move awkwardly to another generation's music. (Would the bartender play Abba's _Take a Chance on Me_ or something by the Beatles if he asked?) Dora clumsily trod on Remus' feet over and over while keeping up a constant stream of apologies to the few others on the floor as she managed to elbow them in the face.

_Back on the train_

_I ask why did I come again_

_Can I confess_

_I've been hangin round your old address?_

_And the years have proved_

_To offer nothin since you moved_

_You're long gone but I can't move on…_

It might be another generation's music, but Remus appreciated the sentiment.

When the song ended, Penny and Tulip were watching them from the edge of the room. Remus was pleased to see that Ayberk had accompanied Tulip; he'd liked Ayberk very much the last time they'd met. Nor was Penny alone; she was accompanied by another young blonde woman who Dora quickly introduced as Penny's sister Beatrice.

Beatrice, more than Penny or Tulip, looked like the sort of friend Remus would have expected Dora to have. She wore nothing but leather and her hair was styled in a short, blunt cut. "Penny and Tonks used to let me tag along after them when they were fourteen and I was ten," Beatrice explained cheerfully. "I've mostly given up following them around, but I'm in town and I wanted to come here tonight."

Tonks beamed at Beatrice. "The more, the merrier," she said.

It was, indeed, a very merry occasion. A strange song was playing in the background. Remus didn't know quite what to make of it, although some of the other patrons seemed to know that a particular dance was required. It was amusing to watch, but Remus thought he would just as soon not try it.

_When I dance they call me Macarena_

_And the boys they say que soy buena_

_They all want me_

_They can't have me_

_So they all come and dance beside me…_

They found a table in the corner and put their backs to the room. Voldemort was dead, but she was still an Auror and he was still a war veteran and they needed to maintain a certain level of vigilance.

Dora summoned the waiter and ordered champagne.

"I didn't think this place served champagne," Tulip mused as a glass was deposited in front of her. "Why is there a gobstone in this?"

Indeed, bright pink gobstones glittered at the bottoms of Tulip's and Penny's champagne flutes.

"You'd better drink fast before it starts tasting like a gobstone," Dora suggested.

Tulip and Penny glanced at each other before downing their champagne in quick, matching gulps. As one, they tipped the gobstones into their hands.

Penny giggled as her gobstone transfigured itself into the shape of a crup; Tulip eyed her suddenly toad-shaped gobstone more suspiciously.

"They were never really gobstones," Dora explained. "Those are their real forms."

"Why doesn't anyone else have them?" asked Tulip.

"Because I'm not asking anyone else to be my matron of honor and my maid of honor at my wedding."

After that, there was a lot of laughter and hugging. Eventually, Dora and her friends left Remus and Ayberk alone at the table and went to dance together.

_If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends_

_Make it last forever, friendship never ends_

_If you wanna be my lover, you have got to give_

_Taking is too easy, but that's the way it is…_

"You know what happens next," said Ayberk conspiratorially.

"Dare I ask?"

"She'll gloat because you haven't made a ceremony of asking your groomsmen to stand up for you the way she did with her bridesmaids."

On the one hand, Remus didn't really mind Dora's gloating because he liked to see Dora happy.

On the other hand….

"Do they have owls here?" he asked.

* * *

The next morning, Remus and Dora slept late. Dora blinked sleepily at Remus over breakfast.

"You can't propose to Harry and Sirius as well as I proposed to Tulip and Penny," she said, rather smugly.

"Is that a challenge?" asked Remus.

"Yes," said Dora.

"Then I accept. I happen to know that Harry and Sirius are free this afternoon. We'll Apparate to Hogsmeade in an hour to meet them?"

She kissed him. "I'm looking forward to it."

He kissed her. "As am I."

(They kissed many more times. They were almost late meeting Harry and Sirius. It was good that he and Ayberk had discussed this the night before when Dora and her friends had been dancing to that ridiculous Muggle song about wanting a zig-a-zig-a, whatever that might have been.)

* * *

Harry was in the garden when they arrived. Remus wasn't certain whether Harry was waiting for them or had merely wanted the challenge of playing with a Snitch outside where it could escape if his reflexes weren't quite fast enough.

From what Remus could tell, Harry's reflexes were always fast enough.

Remus waved his broom, which he had hitherto concealed from Dora, in Harry's direction. "Go get your Firebolt."

Harry took off running as Sirius emerged from the house.

"You didn't tell me to bring mine," Dora objected.

"That's because you're going to be riding with Sirius," Remus explained.

"I'm going to do what?" asked Sirius.

Remus smiled. He liked this part of his plan. "You always promised her that when she was old enough, you'd take her for a ride on your motorcycle. I think she's old enough, don't you?"

Both Sirius and Dora softened. Remus did his best not to gloat outwardly. Harry liked any excuse to fly, and Sirius and Dora would finally have the chance to do something they should have done a decade ago, so his not-much-of-a-plan was already effective.

Presently Harry sped out the door with his Firebolt in his hand. "Where are we going?"

Remus pointed north. "That way, as soon as your godfather gets his motorcycle ready."

"She's always ready," said Sirius, sounding slightly offended. He beckoned to Dora. "Come on. He's right that I do owe you a ride, even if he's wrong about everything else."

Harry was already drifting about in circles on his broom. Remus straddled his own broom and kicked off to join him. "What's going on?"

"We're going flying," said Remus. Harry looked skeptical, which Remus thought was more than reasonable considering how many nasty surprises Harry had had in his short life- and how many of those surprises had been the direct result of Remus' actions. He might have given up the game then- told Harry exactly what he wanted and why he was making a production of asking- but there was a roar and a shout of laughter as Sirius' motorcycle took to the sky. The moment for a quiet conversation had passed.

They skirted around the Hogwarts grounds and flew alongside the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

"Wow," said Harry. "I've never seen it like this. Maybe the time Ron and I crashed his dad's car into the Whomping Willow, but we were more worried about not dying than the view." He swooped low to amuse himself weaving in and out of the highest tree branches, an expression of bliss on his face. Remus thought that everyone ought to be able to enjoy something as much as Harry enjoyed flying.

The motorcycle roared beside Remus. The engine wasn't even running; Sirius just thought that the noise made the whole experience more authentic, and there was no chance of being noticed by Muggles while they were still so close to a well-protected magical creature reservation. Both Sirius and Dora were grinning. Remus couldn't quite catch their shouted words beyond repeated references to Tahiti.

It was a far cry from the last time Remus had taken a trip with Harry and Dora on a mismatched combination of brooms and motorcycles.

He shook off the memory of George's unconscious body slumping bloodily against him and pointed to his right. Sirius was already turning; he'd figured out where Remus meant to go. Harry dropped back to play a moment longer at the edge of the forest before catching up with the others and finally flying ahead of them to the top of the hill. (Or was it a mountain? It was either a very large hill or quite a small mountain and Remus wasn't entirely certain which.)

Remus casually conjured four chairs as they landed.

Sirius huffed in distaste and, with a flick of his wand, made the chairs larger and softer.

Not to be left out, Dora made them sparkle with fluorescent color.

Harry was studiously unimpressed by any of them and examined the package that Remus had placed on the ground between the chairs. "Open it, if you like," said Remus.

Harry did, removing two bottles of champagne.

"That's copying," said Dora.

"Copying what?" asked Harry.

"Never mind," said Dora.

"I think we do mind," said Sirius.

"We do?" asked Harry.

"We do," confirmed Sirius. "They didn't fly us here and bring champagne for no reason, so they may as well get on with it."

"Is there something special about this place?"

"When we were in school, we used to skive off sometimes and fly up here."

Dora's hand fluttered to her chest in mock dismay. "And you, a future professor!" she said to Remus. "Skipping classes."

"Only on special occasions," said Remus.

"For example, when it was Tuesday," said Sirius brightly.

Remus didn't bother to clarify Sirius' exaggeration. It was true that had left school grounds with alarming frequency, but they hadn't usually done it when they were meant to be in class. "As Sirius still somehow managed to learn transfiguration, he'll conjure the champagne flutes for us?"

Four champagne flutes suddenly floated before them in the air. Sirius hadn't uttered a word.

"The difficulty is in making the glass thin enough while still getting the correct shape. He did it so beautifully for Professor Palomer during the Triwizard Tournament that she applauded," Remus told Harry.

"Were we meant to applaud?" asked Dora. "Because I thought it was quite boring. I don't think it's appropriate for a motorcycle ride at all."

"Everything is appropriate for a motorcycle ride," said Sirius.

"And sometimes things belong together even when you wouldn't expect them to," said Remus.

Dora caught his meaning and smiled happily, settling into her chair. "Go on, then."

There was nothing to do _but_ go on. He looked from Harry to Sirius. They both looked back at him expectantly if amusedly.

"Two years ago, Sirius, we sat in front of the fire in my house in Yorkshire and I told you that I would tell you everything I knew about the future with two exceptions. You never cared very much about how Dumbledore was going to die, but you were rather cross when I wouldn't tell you who I was going to marry. You said I couldn't possibly manage to get married without having you as my wingman."

"That sounds like something I would say," Sirius agreed.

"I seem to have managed without a wingman, but I would rather not do this without you as my best man."

"We hadn't already settled this?" asked Sirius. "Best man at your wedding, godfather to your first child." Sirius glanced quickly at Harry, almost as if asking permission. Harry nodded, granting whatever Sirius had asked.

"My friends are much better at being proposed to than yours are," called Dora from behind them.

"It's a contest?" asked Sirius.

"Apparently," said Remus.

Sirius waved his hand. "Ask properly, then."

Remus fell to his knees. Harry and Sirius both swallowed their laughter. "Sirius Orion Black and Harry James Potter, will you do me the honor of standing up for me at my wedding next month?"

"Me too?" asked Harry.

"You too," said Remus. "If you're willing."

"I've never been to a wedding." Harry's eyes darted from side to side behind his glasses. "I wouldn't know what to do."

"It's very easy," said Sirius. "You have one job, and it's to stand there."

"I can do that," Harry decided.

"Don't agree so easily." Sirius wrapped one arm around Harry's shoulders. "I believe Remus should make a speech about how wonderful we are and why he wants us beside him on this very important occasion."

"Did my dad do that when you were the best man at his wedding?" asked Harry.

"It was implied," said Sirius.

Remus theatrically turned away from Sirius and focused all of his attention on Harry. "Harry, I have seen you grow from a child to a young man twice. I have placed burdens on you that you never deserved to shoulder. You have always risen to the occasion. You have never been afraid to speak your mind when you felt that it was necessary and you have always been willing to forgive. You are clever, you are kind, you are brave, and you are more of a natural leader than you know. It has been an honor to be a part of your life, and it would be even more of an honor to have you beside me as I begin the next part of my life."

Harry didn't say anything. Remus didn't blame him, and he quickly looked back toward Sirius. "And Sirius, you have nasty temper. On occasion, you're terribly self-righteous and dismissive of any experience that isn't your own. Also, many of your jokes are objectively not funny. However, I still like you because you're the only person I know who can recite all the moons of Jupiter and never confuse them with the moons of Saturn."

"You know Andromeda. She can do it too."

"Yes, but she has a role in the wedding already."

That was when Sirius broke and laughed out loud. He pulled Remus back to his feet and dragged him into a hug. "Did Tonks insult Penny and Tulip when she asked them to be her bridesmaids?" he asked.

"No, but she did make them think they were about to drink gobstone liquid."

"That's all she did? Then you definitely win."

He knew perfectly well that he had won, and it had nothing to do with a retroactively invented contest that had never had any rules.

_**To be continued.** _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: As in chapter 71, Missing by Everything but the Girl was written by Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt. Its peak UK chart score was number three in November 1995; it spent over seven months on the UK Singles Chart. Wannabe by the Spice Girls was written and composed by the group members in collaboration with Matt Rowe and Biff Stannard. It was released as a single in summer 1996 and was number one on the UK Singles Chart for seven weeks. Macarena by Los del Río remained on the UK Singles Chart throughout 1996, peaking at number two.


	88. Sirius, Best Man

Sirius had three goals for the summer: he wanted Remus and Tonks to have a successful wedding, he wanted Harry to have a happy birthday, and he wanted Regulus to have a peaceful burial.

Through no decision of Sirius', the wedding came first. Tonks and Remus organized the wedding so quickly that under ordinary circumstances Sirius would have kept himself busy with a constant stream of jokes about how obviously the two of them _had_ to get married right away, and why hadn't Moony been more careful?

But those jokes weren't funny in a world where Remus might have eliminated his son from existence by tampering with the very essence of time. These weren't ordinary circumstances. Once again, Sirius wondered what he would do if he were really, truly presented with ordinary circumstances. He had never experienced such a thing.

Sirius found the wedding preparations largely uninteresting. He wan't certain whether it would have been better or worse if Remus had actually cared about the details.

There was, of course, the day that Remus casually suggested that the wedding cake ought to be a carrot cake, and Tonks had flown into a fit of disbelief that _carrot cake was not cake it was a vegetable_ before she'd realized that Remus was joking.

The cake turned out to be chocolate, with fifty ribbons twirled around the base that guests would pull to get a prize along with their slice of cake. Sirius was more or less looking forward to that. He hadn't seen a ribbon prize cake since his early childhood, and he knew that the prizes in this cake weren't going to be small gemstones emblazoned with the names of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.

Then there was the day that Tonks decided that she wanted to be married in a short purple-and-black dress that she had noticed in the window of a Muggle shop. No one disagreed with her proposal that Penny and Tulip should wear Muggle clothing while Remus, Harry, and Sirius wore dress robes to properly reflect the mixed heritage of the happy couple. But there was a certain amount of consternation regarding the color of her hair. Her favorite pink didn't match the dress, the shade of purple that _did_ match the dress apparently made her look peaky, and she certainly wasn't going to wear her natural shade of brown to her own wedding. Eventually Penny determined that Tonks should color one half of her hair black while the other half faded from turquoise to purple to pink.

Sirius considered sending Penny flowers as a thank-you for making that conversation _stop_ .

Three days before the wedding, Harry and Sirius all but moved into Andromeda and Ted's house to prepare their garden for the wedding. The wedding had been scheduled too quickly to allow for any other location, and Tonks liked the idea of having an outdoor ceremony at her beloved childhood home anyway.

Ted and Andromeda wanted to cast spells to keep anyone from accidentally tumbling into the pond. Sirius and Harry thought that it would be better to leave the pond unprotected in the event that someone disrupted the ceremony and needed to be thrown in. Andromeda eventually agreed with Sirius' plan, although he wasn't certain whether she was humoring him or whether she'd decided that he was right.

Otherwise, the preparations were what Sirius understood to be rather normal. Rows of rented chairs (real, not conjured, lest a spell fail at an inopportune time); many flowers, bewitched to appear purple and black like Tonks' dress; and tables that would be laden with food as soon as the ceremony ended. The coordination of food deliveries from a dozen establishments and the hiring of waiters were so frustrating that Andromeda spoke wistfully of using a house-elf.

Sirius never gave any real consideration to summoning Kreacher. Kreacher had gotten better at minding his tongue over the past six months, but under no circumstances did Sirius trust him not to describe the lot of wedding guests as mudbloods and half-breeds and Muggle filth.

* * *

It seemed that almost everyone Remus and Tonks invited made a great effort to arrange their schedules to attend the last-minute ceremony. There were a dozen Aurors, including a more-suspicious-than-usual Mad-Eye; a dozen of Tonks' classmates from school; a handful of Ted's Muggle relatives, looking dazzled by their surroundings; all of the Weasleys, since it hadn't seemed right to invite the four youngest siblings but not the rest of the family, and Molly apparently loved a wedding of any kind; and most of the Hogwarts faculty. Dumbledore had actively hinted for an invitation before they'd even been written/ Tonks and Sirius had found that slightly obnoxious, but Remus had found it charming.

Sirius and Remus stood in Andromeda's front room and watched the guests seat themselves. Peals of laughter occasionally drifted toward them from the upstairs bedroom where Tonks and her friends were getting ready.

Remus looked so pleased and amused that Sirius didn't quite know what to do. He had expected last minute panic. He had planned for flight attempts and self-loathing. He hadn't really considered the possibility that Remus would be relaxed and happy while Sirius himself felt dreadfully nervous.

Even _James_ hadn't been this calm on the morning of his wedding, and James had gone through life expecting everyone to respect him and everything to work out in his favor.

"Did you drink a calming draught or something?" Sirius asked more harshly than he'd intended.

Remus didn't seem to mind the harshness. Remus didn't seem to _notice_ the harshness. "No," he said vaguely. "I can't drink calming draught because one of the ingredients is aconite, and aside from the fact that it might poison me, it could also alter the effects of the wolfsbane potion I take before the next full moon."

Sirius flickered with annoyance. He knew perfectly well what was in a calming draught and why it was worthless to Remus. That wasn't his point. "I mean, are you really not nervous at all? About being bonded for life to my nine-year-old cousin?"

"If she comes down here looking nine years old to anyone other than you, I suppose I shall be concerned," said Remus. Now Remus understood exactly what Sirius had meant and was teasing him. Sirius was even more annoyed. He was tempted to shout for Harry to stop laughing with his friends and get back inside. It was almost time, after all.

"James was more nervous than you are," said Sirius.

"James was nineteen years old and he hadn't done this before," said Remus. "And it was the middle of a war."

It was depressing to be reminded that Remus was more worldly and confident than Sirius was. When they'd been students, Remus had looked to James and Sirius for protection and guidance. If James had lived, their roles would never have been reversed.

James' memory hung thickly in the air; speaking his name made the feeling neither better nor worse. It was in no way a betrayal for Sirius to stand up with Remus. James would have wanted Sirius and Harry to be in the wedding; James would have wanted to be in the wedding himself.

James wouldn't have been jealous.

Sirius was jealous. He was jealous that Remus was ready to bond himself for life to a woman who adored him while Sirius hadn't kissed a woman, let alone done anything else with a woman, for over a year. And when he'd kissed Félicité, she'd told him it wouldn't do, and she'd been right.

"You didn't invite Félicité Palomer?" he asked. Just because things wouldn't do in the long term didn't mean that they wouldn't do in the short term. What one would do with the balance of one's life was quite different from what one would do after attending a wedding. Wasn't it in the grand tradition of best men to have ill-advised sex with one of the guests?

"We did. She wasn't able to come, but she sent a gift with Fleur." Remus pointed to Fleur Delacour, who was draped over Bill Weasley's arm. Most of Bill's siblings were nearby; none of them looked entirely happy. Harry, predictably, was within the cluster of Weasleys. He broke away from them and trotted toward the house when he caught Sirius' eye.

"Is it almost time?" Harry asked.

"Very soon," Remus told him. "Are you ready?"

"Walk down the aisle and then stand there. Yes," said Harry, repeating the directions Sirius had given him more than once.

"Excellent," said Remus. "I knew I made the right choice when I asked you. I think your godfather may be in a little over his head."

Sirius muttered a vague obscenity that made both Harry and Remus laugh.

"Is it about making the toast?" asked Harry. "Because Fred said he's been to about a thousand weddings and he's never heard a good one, so there's not really any pressure. Everyone expects you to fail anyway."

"That's very helpful, Harry," said Sirius.

"I do like to be helpful," said Harry.

"You can make a toast, too, if you'd like," Remus suggested.

"I wrote one just in case," said Harry seriously. "It goes like this: let's all raise our glasses to Remus and Tonks right now so we can eat cake as soon as possible."

"That might put the Weasleys in a better mood." Sirius glanced outside once more. "What's wrong with them?"

Harry lowered his voice. "Bill's asked Fleur to marry him and she's said yes. The rest of his family doesn't like her."

"That happened the first time, too," Remus whispered. "They'll come around once they get to know Fleur better."

"You sure, Moony?" asked Sirius. "Because I don't think Molly will ever think anyone is good enough for any of her precious darlings. She might lock them all up in her attic to make sure no one ever takes them away from her."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "Be nice, Padfoot."

"I'll be nice today because it's your wedding day. I won't make a blanket promise covering all of eternity."

"Remus, on the other hand, had best be willing to make blanket promises covering all of eternity." A new voice interrupted them. Andromeda had come downstairs. "Nymphadora is ready. Tell the musicians and take your places."

Sirius, Remus, and Harry obeyed.

* * *

The ceremony was short. Kingsley murmured to Sirius that Tonks had threatened him with a particularly painful sort of dismemberment if he allowed the ceremony to be anything other than short. Remus said _I do_ , and Tonks said _I do_ , and Kingsley said _bonded for life_ , so Sirius figured that the important bits were covered.

Tonks did trip as she stepped off the makeshift altar. Remus, who had obviously been anticipating as much, caught her easily.

Sirius took Penny's arm as Harry took Tulip's, and they all followed Remus and Tonks back up the aisle, stopping at the end to direct the guests to the tables on the other side of the garden.

"Now, Penny," Tonks ordered almost before everyone had reseated themselves. Behind them, one of the waiters was magically stacking the chairs they had used for the ceremony while another conjured a dance floor in their place.

Penny held up a glass of champagne and magically amplified her voice.

"Hi, everyone," she said. "All of you who know Tonks know that she wants you to have as much fun as possible today, and that her idea of fun is not listening to her maid of honor make a long speech. She doesn't want me to tell you about the first day we met, when we all should have been homesick but instead we spent the whole night laughing at her jokes. She doesn't want me to tell you about how loyal she is to her family and her friends. She definitely doesn't want me to tell you that sometimes when she's dancing she manages to elbow other people in the face even though they're five feet away. But she might be okay with me telling you that she has never been as happy, or as sure of herself, as she has been since she and Remus decided to get married. I'm happy to see the two of them happy, and I know that the rest of you are as well. So I'm going to ask you to please raise your glasses. To Remus and Tonks!"

"To Remus and Tonks," the others echoed, and Tonks pointed at Sirius.

Sirius' mind went blank. He wasn't bothered by the idea of speaking in front of a crowd. He'd testified in front of the entire Wizengamot about the worst experience of his life; what was one little wedding toast? He'd done a perfectly fine job when James had married Lily- said that James was his brother in all but blood and that gaining Lily as a sister made this one of the best days of his life.

There was no reason for him to freeze now.

There was no reason to feel like he ought to be at James' wedding, not at Remus', and like he ought to be nineteen years old, not thirty-six.

Sometimes there didn't need to be a reason.

He hesitated long enough that Remus made a move to intervene.

Sirius cast the charm to amplify his voice and raised his glass. He knew that his voice would be rough, but at least he would be able to force himself to speak. "I've been informed that virtually all wedding toasts are terribly forgettable and a waste of everyone's time. As Penny has already beaten those odds today with her tribute to my wonderful cousin, I don't think it's worth it for me to try to surpass her. I have also promised Remus- my best friend in this world- that I will be nice today, which further limits what I can say to you. So I will follow the advice of a wise young man and inform you that the sooner you raise your glasses, the sooner you will be allowed to eat cake. To Remus and Tonks!"

"To Remus and Tonks," the crowd echoed obediently, many of them tittering slightly.

The music snapped back to attention, and Remus led Tonks onto the newly-conjured dance floor. They danced alone for only a moment or two before gesturing to the members of the wedding party. Penny put her hand on Sirius' arm.

Sirius glanced nervously across the floor at Harry. He recalled that Harry had all but sworn off dancing at the Yule Ball; he doubted that Harry was pleased to have to dance with Tulip, pretty as she was in her blue dress.

"Are you worried about Harry?" asked Penny as Sirius led her robotically through the steps of the dance. It was something slow and wizard-composed, to Sirius' relief. He didn't have to think much to look like he was paying attention.

"He's only ever been to one school dance. Dancing at a wedding is new to him, especially with a grown woman he doesn't even know."

Penny giggled indulgently. "Tulip will take good care of him."

"Tulip is the one who accused Remus of murdering his last girlfriend."

"She never technically accused him of it. She was just _speculating_ ." Penny smiled. "Tulip's like that. She sees a mystery and she has to solve it. Murder seemed more likely than lycanthropy, is all."

As they watched, Tulip said something that made Harry wave sarcastically at Sirius. "All right," said Sirius. "I don't suppose anything bad can happen in the next three minutes."

That was ridiculous. Bad things happened in three minutes all the time. It certainly hadn't taken Lily and James three minutes to die. But he spun Penny in his arms anyway.

A blonde witch stepped to the edge of the dance floor, camera in hand. Many of the attendees carried cameras, but most of the cameras were focused on Remus and Tonks. The blonde was focused on Sirius and Penny. When Sirius got a good look at her, he thought that he knew why.

"Is she your sister?" he asked.

Penny nodded. "Yes. Beatrice."

"You look a lot alike." It was a stupid thing to say. He had never enjoyed hearing hat he and Regulus looked alike, not only because he was obviously taller and more handsome than Regulus, but also because he had not belonged with his family despite outward appearances.

"Only when we're dressed up." Penny's perpetual smile faltered. "She's usually dressed head to toe in dragon hide."

"Is that so terrible?" Sirius didn't think he would mind dressing from head to toe in dragon hide if the moment called for it.

"No." She bit her lip. "But she likes to get herself into dangerous situations. Curse breaking. Not trained, organized Gringotts curse breaking like Bill Weasley does. Freelance. Unofficial things. I worry about her."

"How much younger is she?"

"Four years."

"My brother was less than two years younger than I was. But there was still a time when our parents said that I was responsible for him because I was older, and it was rather difficult to shake that long after he'd decided that I should."

"Exactly!" Penny's smile flashed again, but only briefly. "Bea- well, she spent her first year at Hogwarts trapped inside a painting."

" _How_ ?"

"I'm still not certain. A curse, obviously, and we think she must have touched the wrong portrait at the wrong time. Once we broke the curse, I drove her mad trying to protect her. I wanted to take care of her but it only made her furious with me. She was growing up, she didn't idolize me any longer… it's a wonder that I didn't permanently destroy our relationship."

Sirius couldn't say anything to that. He'd permanently destroyed his relationship with Regulus. Or Regulus had. Or they both had. And now the only thing he could do was try to recover Regulus' body, almost twenty years too late.

It was bad enough that the specter of his brother-in-heart James insisted on hanging over Moony's wedding. Now the specter of his brother-in-blood had decided to visit as well.

"What was your brother's name?" Penny asked. Sirius was glad that she'd asked an easy question rather than _When did you disown each other?_ or _How did he die?_

"Regulus."

"That's a nice name."

"As astronomy-textbook names go." He could have gone by _Reg_ or _Reggie_ and passed as a normal human being, but of course Regulus had never wanted to pass as anything but the Heir to the House of Black. Or had he? Sirius was never going to know.

"I think it's sweet that your family had a theme."

"And that is the only time the Black family has ever been called sweet."

"I didn't say the family was sweet. Just the names," said Penny.

Sirius chuckled. "In my horrid ancestral home, there's a family tree that's a real work of art. Or it was until they started blasting off the names of everyone who displeased them. I've restored all of the names that I can remember- I need to get Arthur Weasley to tell me his brothers' names today so I can fix that part of the tree. Regulus' name was never removed, of course. Mine was. But when I retraced his name, it was… well, it reminded me that you can't erase certain things as easily as you might think that you can."

"No," agreed Penny. "I'm glad you decided to fix it instead of destroy it."

"My mother's portrait is the thing I'd like to destroy." The song had ended and they walked from the floor toward the high table. "Unfortunately, there's no way to fix it or destroy it."

"Are you sure?"

"I've tried everything."

"But you're not a portrait specialist, are you?"

"Do you know a portrait specialist?" he challenged.

Penny looked rather victorious. "Let me introduce you to Badeea Ali. She was one of Tulip's roommates at school."

* * *

It was hours later-after they'd all eaten and danced and eaten again- when the young woman approached Sirius. She had brown eyes and pale skin and wore a blue-sparkled hijab. "My name is Badeea Ali. Penny said I needed to meet you."

"Does Penny often order you to meet people?" asked Sirius.

"Sometimes," said Badeea. "She's usually right about these things, so I listen. Tell me about your portrait."

"Tell me why I should tell you about my portrait."

She tilted her head as if seriously pondering the merits of his question. "I'm quite good at painting portraits and I know a lot about the spells you need to create them. When I was at Hogwarts, I used to spend hours talking to the portraits every day."

"You wouldn't want to talk to this one." Sirius didn't think he would be able to stand the idea of Badeea talking to his mother's portrait in any case. Badeea was obviously a half-blood if not Muggle-born. The things his mother would say about blood status alone didn't bear contemplation, and as to what she would think of Badeea's hijab… "That's the problem. She was a hateful, bigoted woman and her portrait cannot be stopped from screaming hateful, bigoted things. A silencing charm is barely worth casting. The best I can do is keep her asleep as much as possible, but that still makes the whole building useless."

"Portraits have a piece of the subject in them," said Badeea. "All humans can change, and that means all portraits can change. With the correct spell and enough time, of course."

"She didn't want to change and neither does her portrait."

Badeea's eyes flashed with a keen interest. "I like a challenge if you'll let me try."

_**To be continued.** _


	89. Sirius, Art Critic

When the wedding was over, Sirius encouraged Harry to go home with the Weasleys, which was clearly what Harry wanted to do anyway.

He told Remus and Tonks to enjoy their honeymoon, not that they needed telling.

He helped Andromeda and Ted see off the waiters, return the rented chairs, and put their house and garden to rights. It didn't take long, Andromeda's skill at housekeeping spells being what it was.

Still, dawn was breaking by the time Sirius Apparated back to Hogsmeade and sent an owl to Badeea Ali telling her that he would compensate her very well if she could, in fact, find a way to make his mother's portrait even slightly more tolerable. To his surprise, she answered by return owl that she would begin that very day if he happened to be available. It seemed that Badeea was either an insomniac or a morning person. Either way, he supposed, it couldn't be helped. So he left a note for Harry, in the event that Harry decided to Floo home without warning, and Apparated to London.

Badeea met him on the street outside Grimmauld Place and watched with interest as he revealed Number 12. It made him uncomfortable to see her face alight with curiosity. The wonder would vanish and be replaced with revulsion as soon as he opened the door.

"I suggest that you draw your wand," he advised her, and she removed it from the blue bag she carried over her left shoulder. "I think we've gotten rid of the doxies and boggarts and the worst dark objects, but I can't ever say for certain that nothing new has moved in since the last time I visited." He opened the door and walked through it. He would have held the door and let Badeea proceed him if it had been any other door.

"Wow," breathed Badeea once she had slipped inside. "Is that umbrella stand made from a troll's leg?"

"I haven't had time to dispose of everything offensive. I started with the things that were actively dangerous," said Sirius gruffly. "At least the house-elf heads that used to be mounted above the stairway are gone."

He opted not to tell her that they'd been destroyed when he'd fought his cousin to the death.

They were standing right where Bellatrix's body had lain.

Badeea didn't seem to notice. She was still staring at the umbrella stand. "If it hadn't been made from the leg of a real troll- if it had been carved or transfigured- I might appreciate the artistic statement. If it were just a commentary on the way our bodies are part of a greater whole, and the uncountable ways that we use them during our lives, and how the mundane is beautiful if you think about it long enough…"

Sirius stopped listening and decided right then that this had been a mistake. Badeea didn't have the fortitude or the sense of self-preservation to take on his mother's portrait. "It's not a commentary on anything other than the right of the more powerful to abuse the less powerful."

"Obviously," said Badeea. "But if it weren't-"

"But it is." He gestured that she should follow him down the hallway. Most of the portraits hung silent and crooked on the walls.

"I can restore these easily," Badeea volunteered. "A few potions, a few charms. I might not even need paint."

"They're of no concern," said Sirius as he resolutely reached for the moth-eaten velvet curtains that concealed his mother's portrait.

"When we replace the curtains, what color would you like?" asked Badeea.

It had never crossed Sirius' mind to replace the curtains, but he remembered how the drawing room on the first floor had almost become pleasant after he'd restored the tapestry. "You're the artist. What color do you suggest?"

"Perhaps I should see the portrait first." And she reached out and pushed the curtains apart.

Sirius couldn't help but be gratified when she jumped back at her first glimpse of Walburga Black. She had been taking the entire exercise far too lightly.

Walburga was drooling in her sleep. Her black cap had slid over he face to cover some of her yellow skin. He clawed hands rested almost peacefully in her lap.

"When was this painted?" asked Badeea quietly.

"After my father and brother died in 1979. Before she died in 1985," said Sirius.

"Do you know whether her skin was yellow? Was her liver failing? Or has the painting not been cared for properly? Or was it inaccurate in the first place?"

"I last saw her long before this was painted," said Sirius as delicately as he could manage. He did not volunteer that he had probably been in prison at the time, though Badeea doubtless knew as much anyway.

"But when she was healthy and well, her complexion was the same as yours?"

"Yes." Sirius deeply resented the implication that anything about him had anything to do with the woman before them.

"Then I suppose it's time to wake her up."

"I've never woken her up deliberately."

Badeea touched her wand to the side of the picture frame. "Mrs. Black?" she asked. "We'd like to speak to you."

She startled awake. Drool flew in all directions; her hands lashed out as if to claw through the canvas. "Who dares to disturb the house of my fathers?"

"Mrs. Black, my name is Badeea Ali." Sirius knew the politeness would be lost on the portrait. It would have been lost on his mother in life as well, even before his mother had become quite so nakedly unhinged.

"Filth! Scum! Mudblood!"

"Half-blood, technically," said Badeea pleasantly. "Mum is a Muggle, but Dad-"

"You will leave the house of my fathers!"

Badeea seemed not to hear. "I'm here to help you." She removed a paintbrush and a bottle of potion from her blue bag and began to coat the painting in practiced, even strokes.

"What is that?" asked Sirius. "I didn't think you could paint over a magical portrait."

"This is just a cleaning solution," said Badeea. "We need to remove the dirt that accumulated over the years. It doesn't come cheap, of course- made with real dragon blood."

Indeed, the portrait immediately began to look somewhat brighter, if no less ugly.

"I can't quite reach," said Badeea. She handed her brush to Sirius. "You do the top."

Sirius' mind churned frantically in search of an excuse, but the brush was already in his hand and Badeea was already rummaging in her bag for another potion.

It was a portrait. It was loud and vulgar and ugly, but it was nothing more than paint and canvas and a number of spells.

No matter how frantically its hands flashed, it couldn't grab him by the ear and cast a sticking charm to confine him to a chair.

It couldn't hex his lips together to keep him from speaking.

It couldn't send him to bed without supper.

It couldn't disinherit him. He'd inherited everything.

It couldn't disown him. He had Anna and Tonks, and they were the only relatives he wanted anyway. Certainly he didn't care about the opinions of Narcissa and Draco Malfoy, the only other surviving heirs to the House of Black.

It couldn't keep him from seeing his friends. James was gone, of course, and Remus temporarily out of touch, but he had Harry…

The words were just words.

"Shame of my flesh! Blood traitor! Abomination! It should have been you who died and Regulus who lived. _Why couldn't it have been you?_ "

(The words weren't just words.)

"Shut up, you old hag!" he snapped.

Badeea stood up and reached for the brush that dangled uselessly in Sirius' hand. "Here, let me have it. I'll cast a levitation charm."

"No," said Sirius. He wasn't going to let this child the same age as Andromeda's daughter look at him with pity and assume he wasn't capable of touching his own mother's portrait even with a brush.

He applied the potion to the top third of the portrait. His strokes were not as even and delicate as Badeea's, but they were good enough to his untrained eye.

Badeea gestured that his work had been acceptable and held up a new vial of potion and a fresh brush. "This is to strengthen the canvas beneath the paint."

He appreciated that she was going to pretend that she hadn't heard anything his mother had said. He still had to ask. "Isn't there something that will dissolve the canvas?"

"If there is, I don't know about it." Badeea began to coat the portrait with the second potion. "I'm more interested in magic that creates than magic that destroys."

Sirius supposed that it was easy for a witch who was barely old enough to remember the reign of Voldemort to say something quite so self-righteous. Meanwhile, Badeea handed him her brush once again, and this time he ran it over the horrible black cap that covered his mother's rough hair without hesitating.

His stomach squirmed painfully.

Badeea produced a small palette that seemed to contain infinite colors of paint. She waved her wand and the palette began to spin. As Sirius watched, the colors at the top of the palette began to match themselves to the colors on the portrait.

"I'll fix a few of the cracks now," she decided. "If I correct the overall color, I'll do it the next time I visit."

 _"You shall not return!"_ His mother's voice was a shrill as ever. "Filth! Half-blood! Your mother is a Muggle slag, lower than a flobberworm."

"My mum's an engineer," said Badeea. "She likely doesn't know what a flobberworm is."

Sirius almost laughed. He thought that Badeea noticed out of the corner of her eye and looked ever-so-slightly satisfied with herself.

Walburga continued to shriek. She screamed at Sirius. She screamed at Badeea. She screamed about half-bloods and mudbloods and blood traitors.

"Can we move to a quieter room for a moment?" asked Badeea when she'd filled in the paint where it had cracked. The portrait was still ugly, and the words it screamed uglier still, but it suddenly bore the unmistakeable look of something that had been well cared-for. The ragged curtains looked even worse now that the portrait behind them sparkled with cleanliness.

"We'll be able to hear her in every room in the house," said Sirius dourly, even though it wasn't entirely true. "Come upstairs."

"It's beautiful!" Badeea exclaimed as they entered the drawing room. Her obsession with finding beauty and artistry everywhere was far less aggravating here than it had been on the ground floor. The fireplace and the picture windows with the view of the street below were beautiful.

Even the family tree wasn't as bad as it had once been. It was comforting to see Andromeda's name again.

Of course, Badeea could hardly help but notice the tree. "Did you restore this yourself?" she asked.

"A few months ago." _Right before I killed my cousin._

"I've never seen its equal. Did you use secret family spells?"

"I don't know how secret they are. They seem rather intuitive to me."

"They would, wouldn't they? It's your family."

Sirius could have killed her right there. The house was unplottable. The Ministry would never have found the body.

"Oh, there's Tonks," Badeea continued, pointing to her old classmate's name. She was blissfully unaware that the convicted murderer standing five feet away from her just been contemplating her untimely demise.

"The two of you were good friends at school?" Sirius asked, congratulating himself on turning the conversation to polite, non-homicidal topics.

Badeea looked pensive. "More friends of friends," she said. "Tulip was my roommate and Tonks' partner in crime. I didn't have very many friends at school. I was always off by myself painting or watching the stars or trying to invent new spells. Half the time I didn't know my classmates' names, let alone what was going on at school. I think Tonks invited me to the wedding because she sat beside me at Tulip's wedding last autumn and she thought it would be rude not to invite me to her wedding, too."

Sirius, who knew far more about Tonks and Remus' wedding plans than he'd really cared to know, shook his head. "I'm sure that isn't true. They invited people they liked. That's all there was to it."

Badeea looked like she might have argued the point, but the fireplace flared to life. " _Sirius_ ?" came Harry's voice.

Sirius scrambled to the hearth and threw himself down beside it. His family had only connected the fireplace in the kitchen to the Floo network- entering through the drawing room was uncivilized, and only the lowest of the low were unable to Apparate and enter by the front door- but Sirius had altered the connection after Bellatrix's death. "Harry? What's wrong?"

_"Nothing. Can I come through?"_

Nothing was wrong. What a unique turn of events. "Come through."

An instant later, Harry was dusting the ash from his clothes. "I really don't like Floo powder," he said conversationally. "I can't wait until I can learn to Apparate."

"You've only got one more year to wait before you get your license," said Sirius. He pretended that the idea of Harry being a legal adult didn't fill him with confusion and dread. "Did you meet Badeea Ali at the wedding yesterday?"

"No," said Harry, and he shook Badeea's hand politely. Badeea refrained from gawking at Harry's scar, and suddenly Sirius liked her a bit better.

"Badeea is going to attempt to make my mother's portrait less hideous. So far she's succeeded in making it less filthy. Unfortunately, I'm speaking literally, not metaphorically."

"We've only just begun," said Badeea. "I haven't even tried to change the spells that make her speak."

"You can do that?" Harry asked interestedly.

"I've done it on portraits I painted myself, and I've restored portraits that were damaged so that they were able to speak the way they were meant to. I've never changed another artist's work at such a basic level."

"I hope you can," said Harry. "The only other option might be to burn the whole house down, and Sirius hasn't even put my name on the tapestry yet."

Sirius was both pleased and concerned that Harry genuinely wanted his name on the tapestry. "We can put it on now, if you'd like."

Harry nodded enthusiastically. "Yes."

"May I watch?" asked Badeea.

Sirius doubted that he could have stopped her. She made a better audience than Kreacher had done, at least. He drew his wand and his breath. _"Filo subtegminis aurum scribentes."_

Harry and Badeea both gasped as the golden threads began to glow. Sirius held his wand over his own name and drew the golden thread downward before writing as if in a trance:

_Harry James Potter._

He looked over his shoulder at Harry, who flashed him a grin. "Now do Lupin."

Sirius felt himself beginning to grin, too. That did need doing. He let his wand drift over to Andromeda and down to Tonks. "Connubium," he said, and added one more name:

_Remus John Lupin._

For the first time, the tapestry really and truly reflected Sirius' family.

"Can you put Ron on?" asked Harry. "You said his dad is your second cousin once removed or something?"

It was only right that the tapestry reflect all of Harry's family as well. He found his way back to the line connecting Cedrella Black and Septimus Weasley. He added their son Arthur, and then Molly, and then their children.

"Say Ron's siblings' names in order," Sirius demanded, and Harry obliged. The tapestry itself seemed to be able to fill in middle names where Harry couldn't. _William Arthur. Charles Septimus. Percy Ignatius. Frederick Gideon. George Fabian. Ronald Billius. Ginevra Molly._

"Perfect," said Harry.

"It is," agreed Badeea. "You're an artist, Sirius."

Sirius didn't think that that was true at all, but he accepted the compliment and made plans to meet Badeea again at the end of the week.

* * *

"Why did you come to Grimmauld Place?" Sirius asked Harry when they were safely back in Hogsmeade.

"Because that's where your note said you were," said Harry unhelpfully.

"You could have stayed with the Weasleys."

"Ron's angry because Hermione hasn't dumped Krum, Mrs. Weasley's upset because the twins are moving to their new flat in Diagon Alley, and Ginny's furious that Bill wants to marry Fleur. I'd rather be here," said Harry lightly.

It was almost believable. But the Weasley family's periodic loud disagreements had never bothered Harry before, and Harry had certainly been pleased enough to be in their midst at the wedding.

Sirius waited for Harry to try the truth.

"I needed to talk to you," said Harry at last. "But I didn't want to do it before the wedding, and we don't have to do it now if you stayed up all night…"

Sirius genuinely wished that Harry hadn't picked up the habit of monitoring his sleep patterns from Remus. "I'm never going to sleep normally," he reminded Harry as gently as he could. "I spent twelve years in a prison where it was very difficult to tell night from day."

"But-"

"No. What did you want to talk about?"

He could almost see Harry admit defeat- or victory, he wasn't sure which- before Harry spoke. "Do you still have that ring you found? That one that was a Horcrux?"

Sirius flicked open a kitchen cabinet and removed the ring from a hidden compartment beneath a shelf of glasses pilfered from the Three Broomsticks. He handed the ring to Harry.

Harry studied the ring and nodded as if seeing what he'd expected to see. "Dumbledore says that the stone inside is a resurrection stone. Do you know _The Tale of the Three Brothers?"_

"That's just a story, Harry," said Sirius, but his mind was spinning. A resurrection stone! Harry could have James and Lily back, they wouldn't mind being shades if it meant being able to see their son, and he could ask Regulus what the hell he'd meant to do, yes, he'd finally get answers about Regulus…

"I promised I would let Dumbledore look at it before I destroyed it. Do you want to come with me?"

He didn't want to go with Harry. He didn't want to talk to Dumbledore. And he didn't want to destroy the stone.

"We have to destroy the stone," said Harry firmly, even though Sirius hadn't said anything. "Nothing good will happen from someone using it."

"It sounds like you were the one who used it to call us- Remus and me and your parents- to you when you died. It sounds like this is what let Remus relive five years and save many lives, including mine. I wouldn't call that 'nothing good.'" He hadn't felt himself come to the conclusion, but when he spoke aloud he knew that he was right.

"I was about to die," said Harry. "That's different."

"I don't deny that." His fingers were itching to snatch the stone away from Harry. _James and Lily and Regulus and…_

Harry had been right to take the ring away from Sirius before telling Sirius what it was. Harry was the wisest person Sirius had ever met.

Sirius cast a Patronus and sent it rushing toward the Hogwarts castle bearing a message: _I have jewelry that interests you. When would you like to see it?_

Barely a moment passed before a Patronus in the shape of a phoenix swooped down upon them. _Now, if you please._

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was one of the greatest, strongest, most brilliant wizards in the history of magic. The resurrection stone- if, indeed, that was what it was- was one of the most magnificent magical artifacts ever created.

Sirius ought to have been honored to be in the room while Dumbledore prodded and cast spells and took notes.

Sirius was bored and unable to focus. Over and over, his mind wandered to Regulus.

 _It should have been you who died and Regulus who lived. Why couldn't it have been you?_ his mother's portrait had screamed.

 _You're awfully hard on him. He was a child. Your instinct was to confront. Your brother's was to appease. That doesn't necessarily make him soft or a coward. He was in a difficult situation,_ Slughorn had opined.

 _Regulus was a seeker,_ Harry had volunteered, as if Quidditch was all that mattered. _He's sitting in the middle of the front row. That's where the seeker sits. That's where I sit._

 _It's no wonder that our parents loved me and not you. I was better than you, after all. While you were flying about on your motorcycle, laughing with James, pretending that you were so very superior, I was dying to save the world from the Dark Lord,_ the shade of Regulus had told Sirius in this very room.

He knew, again, that Harry had been right to plan to destroy the resurrection stone. He wanted answers from Regulus, but no answer Regulus could have given him would have satisfied him.

Dumbledore thanked Harry gravely for his help. The destroyed the resurrection stone.

Sirius tried to put Regulus out of his mind.

* * *

It was difficult to keep Regulus out of his mind when their mother's portrait began to wail anew under Badeea's tender ministrations.

"Filth! Scum! Mudblood! Leave this house!"

"I brought you some new curtains," said Badeea. "Sirius hasn't chosen anything yet, so I decided to try blue. That's my favorite color."

"You are disgusting!"

"Are you disgusting?" Badeea asked the portrait.

"I am a daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black!"

"What's the most noble thing about the House of Black?" asked Badeea.

"Our blood is pure."

"Do you think the artist who painted your portrait was having you on?" Badeea asked. Her wand and paintbrush worked in tandem to brighten Walburga's complexion and straighten her clothing.

When the portrait didn't answer, Badeea tapped it with her wand. It froze.

"Leave it like that!" exclaimed Sirius. His mother, confined to stillness like a Muggle photograph, shielded by the new blue curtains, was a better outcome than he had let himself imagine.

"It won't last," said Badeea. "I have to find a part of her that made it into this portrait but that isn't about blood purity."

"Good luck," Sirius muttered under his breath as the portrait came alive again. Badeea switched her attention to its hands. The hands remained aged and clawed, but Badeea did something that let them lie evenly in Walburga's lap.

"Were you mourning your son Regulus when you were painted?" Badeea asked.

Sirius didn't want to hear Regulus' name ever again. He would have left the room, but he would never have forgiven himself if Badeea had managed to get herself killed. He'd never heard of a painting killing someone, but Penny had told that story about her sister being trapped inside a portrait…

"My Regulus," said Waburga. "He disappeared."

"You loved him."

"I loved him."

"Tell me about Regulus."

"Regulus was noble." Sirius rolled his eyes. Trust his mother not to be able to say one thing that indicated that she had ever known Regulus at all. Not that he had known Regulus, either.

"What made him noble?" asked Badeea.

"He was always conscious of his place in the world. He studied hard. His marks were excellent. He respected his family. He defended his values. Our values."

"Did you love your son?"

"I loved my son."

Badeea tapped the portrait again, and her wand flashed as she murmured a dozen spells Sirius didn't know.

"Do you love your son?" she asked when the portrait resumed moving.

"I love my son." The tone had changed. It was less shrill, less distracted. For just an instant, Sirius felt his knees shake. He hadn't heard his mother speak so calmly for nearly thirty years. Until that moment, he'd forgotten that he'd ever heard her speak calmly.

He could almost imagine that she meant him.

Not that he wanted that.

Damn Regulus, anyway.

_**To be continued.** _

* * *


	90. Tonks Interlude L

They spent their honeymoon in Egypt.

They'd both traveled there before. She'd visited for a particularly terrifying week of Auror training, and he'd visited for a particularly painful attempt to cure lycanthropy.

They agreed that it would be nice to see Egypt through the eyes of a couple on holiday instead of the way they'd seen it before.

 _If_ , Tonks told Remus more than once, _we ever decide to leave our bedroom._

They did spend a disproportionate amount of time in bed. They were careful, though, very careful. They needed to wait a year to start a family; Teddy wasn't due to join them until spring 1998. A year of married life without worrying about a baby sounded good to Tonks, anyway. She liked Remus and she planned to enjoy having him all to herself. She especially wanted to have him all to herself on a flying carpet ride. It would be equal parts fun, adventure, and romance.

Renting flying carpets for a nighttime trip around the pyramids turned out to be such a popular pastime that they weren't able to get reservations until they had already been in Egypt for a week. She spent half an hour in front of the mirror attempting to choose just the right hair color. Dark blue, like the night sky, or silver-gold, like the stars?

"Which?" she asked Remus at last. "And don't say I'm equally beautiful either way."

"I would never say something so obvious." Remus kissed her on the back of her neck, and her insides warmed with pleasure. She was looking forward to riding a flying carpet, but she didn't think it would be so terrible if they spent the night the way they had spent most of their nights since arriving in Egypt.

She turned her head to kiss him back. "Which color, then?" It was silly and frivolous, perhaps, to want to coordinate her hair with important life experiences, but it was part of how she expressed herself and she didn't intend to stop. She was only going to have one honeymoon carpet ride in her life, after all.

"The white-blonde color," he said.

She nodded. She thought that she liked that color best, too. "It stands out more."

"And it will make it easier for me to see you if you fall off the carpet."

She flipped her newly silver hair in mock annoyance. "A few years ago, Magical Law Enforcement confiscated about a hundred flying carpets. I've seen more of them than most British witches."

"They haven't been illegal in Britain for so very long. Your great-grandparents probably owned one."

She laughed humorlessly. " _My_ great-grandparents? My great-grandparents probably owned a broomstick that automatically sensed when it was flying over Muggles and fired poison darts at them."

"Other peoples' great-grandparents, then. You don't need to be as old as Dumbledore to remember riding on one."

"You don't remember when they were legal, do you?"

"I'm not _that_ old, Dora. But I did grow up with James Potter and Sirius Black."

"You didn't. Did you?" She was both quite jealous and slightly concerned. She would have dearly loved to try out one of the confiscated flying carpets when she'd seen them in the storage area near the Auror Office, but her career would have been over before it had begun if she'd been caught, and so she had restrained herself. Flying carpets weren't just slightly illegal in magical Britain; they were _very_ illegal. Most of the stories she had heard about Remus and Sirius and their friends as teenagers had involved petty misdemeanors: skipping a class or hexing a fellow student. Nothing that could have gotten them in real trouble.

"We didn't," Remus confirmed. "But I'm flattered that you believe we could have."

"So this will be something you do for the first time with me?" she asked.

"This will be one of many things I'll do for the first time with you."

"Good." She took his hand, and they stepped outside into the warm night.

The sun had been down for hours when they reached Pyramid Carpet Rides. Tonks briefly wondered whether the name sounded more creative in Arabic.

They were greeted immediately by a man about twenty years her senior. He was bouncing enthusiastically on his toes. "Welcome!" he exclaimed. "My name is Radwan, and I will be your best friend for the next five hours."

"Hi, Radwan!" Tonks couldn't help bouncing enthusiastically along with him.

"First time on a flying carpet?" Radwan asked, although it was abundantly clear that he already knew the answer.

"Yes," Tonks confirmed.

"You're used to riding brooms?"

"Yes," she said again, even though _used to_ wasn't entirely accurate. She knew how to ride a broom, and she could fly well enough, but her clumsiness made her a constant hazard to herself. She would never have the sort of natural, brilliant ease on a broom that Harry did- nor even the calm competence of Remus.

"Forget everything you know. You're used to wrapping your hands around the pole and steering like you're in a Muggle automobile."

She decided not to tell him that she knew perfectly well how to drive a Muggle automobile and it wasn't anything like flying on a broom. Instead, she climbed onto the carpet and listened carefully to the directions Radwan gave her. Lean forward to make the carpet accelerate and back to make it stop. Never underestimate how sensitive the carpet is to changes in weight distribution.

Butterflies flickered delightedly in her stomach as she turned the carpet in a low, slow loop around Radwan and Remus.

"You're thinking too much," Radwan criticized. He gestured toward Remus. "It's to make up for him not thinking at all? That's always the way."

She rolled her eyes but didn't bother correcting Radwan before letting Remus have his turn getting on the carpet by himself.

She could tell right away that he'd done a bit better than she had- which was only reasonable, because she'd gone first and he'd had the advantage of watching her.

"Now, both of you together," said Radwan. "It will respond to both of your instructions, so you need to move in the same direction. A flying carpet for two is not the place for a lovers' quarrel."

They nodded their understanding as they settled onto the carpet side by side.

Radwan glanced at the sky. "You'd find more romance in the moonlight, but the moon is new tonight. You've planned poorly."

"Imagine that," said Remus with a perfectly straight face. "We'll have to plan more carefully next time."

"It's as you said, Radwan," Tonks added. "He just doesn't think ahead."

Radwan laughed appreciatively. "Just remember that the carpet won't take well to anything… especially amorous. We used to hex them but we've found that that's not necessary. I also need to warn you that there are very serious punishments if you fly out of the designated area. And by 'very serious punishments,' I mean prison."

"We understand," Tonks and Remus chorused, and suddenly they were flying through the night air on their very own rented magic carpet. The sky and the stars had never been so beautiful as they were beside the pyramids.

Tonks relished the feeling of Remus' arms around her. After they had been in the air for some time, she impulsively kissed him. He laughed, as happy and carefree as she'd ever heard him. "Not that I didn't enjoy it, but we were warned about what would happen if we became _especially amorous_ ."

"But we weren't warned." Her heart pounded with exhilaration and curiosity and mischief and love. "He told us that they used to hex the carpets, but now they don't. Don't you want to know what would happen? In the interest of furthering academic knowledge?" She felt a smile spread across her face. "Don't you want to know the exact definition of _especially amorous_ ? We know it wasn't that kiss."

He didn't require much convincing. He kissed her deeply and completely, and she returned the kiss with all of her enthusiasm, but the carpet drifted forward without showing any sign that it had been affected.

"Are we doing it wrong?" he asked breathlessly. The twinkle in his eye suggested that he wasn't actually concerned.

"One way to find out." She wrapped her legs around his waist and rolled onto her back.

The next thing she knew, she was falling through the night sky. She drew her wand- she had plenty of time to keep herself from being hurt, and Remus, too, if he hadn't drawn his own wand quickly enough- but she found herself suspended in midair.

"It's charmed to catch us in some sort of bubble," Remus called from behind her. "Quite clever, really."

Above them, the carpet waved its tassels sarcastically as if accepting the compliment.

The simplest of levitation spells returned them to their proper position atop the carpet.

"We deserved that," Tonks said cheerfully, and Remus agreed. They laughed and laughed and leaned forward to make the carpet fly faster.

The better they got at flying the carpet, the more fun it became. They climbed sharply upward and then soared downward just as quickly.

Last summer, they'd ridden a roller coaster together. She had wondered if she would ever be able to trust him, and she'd made a fool of herself demanding that he allow throngs of Muggles to see the cursed scars on his arms.

So much could change for the better in a year.

* * *

Although it was the early hours of the morning when they returned the carpet to Radwan and told him goodbye, Tonks was drawn by the sound of music being played down the street. She loved music of all kinds and this was like nothing she had ever heard. She picked out the sounds of a trumpet, a trombone, a bass, and a snare drum.

"It's not jazz exactly," she mused aloud as she led Remus around the corner. "It's funk and salsa and, oh, all kinds of things." They listened for a long while before agreeing that it was time to return to their hotel.

"That alley will take us back to the hotel in half the time," Remus said, pointing to a dark, winding path.

It was an objectively terrible idea. They had no business walking down unlit passageways in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night, no matter how well they could protect themselves with magic. But she was suddenly very tired and the idea of a shortcut was tantalizing. She fingered her wand lightly and followed Remus into the alley.

Buildings were high and close on either side of the path, but their hotel soon came into view and Tonks inwardly congratulated herself for taking this small, calculated risk.

Then the darkness moved beside them and swooped closer, a magic carpet with less patience than the one they had ridden earlier that night.

" _Expecto Patronum_ !" Remus bellowed beside her, and she followed suit before she entirely realized why.

"Is that-"

"It's a lethifold," Remus confirmed.

Her jackrabbit and his wolf circled what looked like a thick black cloak.

"Are they native to Egypt?"

Remus shook his head. "They like tropical climates. I shouldn't think this one arrived here by its own choice."

Tonks groaned. They'd been having such a nice night, such a nice honeymoon, and now she had only one option. "We have to contact the local authorities."

"I agree."

"I may have to do more than just alert them. Scrimgeour gave me a whole lecture when I told him where we were going. He said that I'm always representing the Auror office, especially when I'm outside the United Kingdom. He said that especially after what happened with Karkaroff-"

"I understand, Dora," said Remus gently. "Auror or not, we can't leave a lethifold to roam the city. Most of the people it meets are not going to be able to send two corporeal Patronuses at it at the same time."

She looked again at bright lights as they merrily confined the lethifold. Her jackrabbit was as joyful and playful as ever; his wolf was much more serious but just as beautiful.

"I've never actually seen you cast a corporeal Patronus," she realized. "I knew you could, of course, but you don't."

"I don't prefer to advertise its form," he said tightly. "We can't have this conversation here, particularly if our lethifold friend is working with a human owner."

She fired off another Patronus, this one bearing a message for the Egyptian Ministry of Magic's Department of Law Enforcement. She was briefly grateful to Scrimgeour for forcibly reminding her of its location.

* * *

To their immense credit, a pair of Egyptian Aurors arrived almost immediately. They introduced themselves as Zaki and Saima, and they informed Remus and Tonks that their discovery of a lethifold was not a surprise. The lethifold was quickly sedated with a potion, and Tonks was advised that she ought to come to the Auror Office to fill out some paperwork, in the interests of international magical cooperation…

She told Remus to return to the hotel and that she would meet him there when she could.

* * *

The morning sun had brightened the sky by the time Tonks was permitted to leave the Auror Office. She would have enjoyed seeing the Egyptian Auror Office under ordinary circumstances. Although she had never before met Zaki and Saima, she had met several younger witches and wizards who worked there during her training and she would not have minded seeing them again.

But as it was, she was tired and hungry and it was her honeymoon, so she shouldn't have had to work.

"Dora!" Remus called her name as soon as she stepped onto the pavement. He had waited for her. Of course he had.

She ran to him. She was always going to run to him. "You waited for me!" she exclaimed.

"I waited three years to be married to you again. I could certainly wait three hours for you to help protect the world from illegally trafficked lethifolds."

She didn't think that she had ever heard anything so lovely. "What have you been doing?"

He gestured toward a bookshop half-hidden between two larger buildings. "They have a marvelous old book about sphinxes. I'd never seen it before, nor even heard the riddles- and I thought I'd run through all of the old riddles teaching at Hogwarts these past few years. I liked to teach them to the younger students who didn't have a grounding in basic charmwork."

She glanced at his hands, which were empty. "And you didn't buy it?"

"It was a very rare book, as I said. The price-"

She rolled her eyes and stormed into the bookshop. "Where is the book about sphinxes my husband was looking at a moment ago?" she asked the woman who looked as if she might be the owner.

The woman beamed and produced the book from behind the counter. "I'd hoped Remus would come back for it."

"We'll have it, please," she said.

"You haven't even looked at the price, Dora," said Remus, who had drifted into the store behind her. He looked amused, but he also looked concerned. She hated to see him look concerned about something as mundane as the price of a book. Concern should be saved for things like lethifolds and dark wizards- and even then, small quantities of concern ought to have been sufficient.

"There's no wrong price for the right sorry-for-working-during-our-honeymoon present," she declared. She nodded at the shop owner, who was wrapping up the book. (She finally got a glimpse of the price. It _was_ eye-popping; she could have bought a pair of front row seats to the Weird Sisters' biggest show of the year for that much. But she knew Remus would never have begrudged her the concert tickets, so she certainly wasn't going to begrudge him the book.)

"Thank you, Fizza," said Remus to the shop owner as she passed the book over the counter to them. "And thank you, Dora."

"You're welcome," said the shop owner- Fizza. "Enjoy the rest of your honeymoon."

"We will," said Tonks, and she looped her arm back through Remus' where it belonged before meeting Remus' eyes. "So you spent the morning making new friends and finding out-of-print books while I spent the morning working."

"Yes," said Remus.

"Can we eat now?" she asked, since there didn't seem to be anything else to discuss.

Remus pointed to a stand across the street. "They're selling ta'ameya."

Her mouth watered at the thought. In most parts of the Middle East, falafel was made with ground chickpeas. In Egypt, they had learned, it was made with dried fava beans and served with pita bread, tomato, onions, and tahini sauce. It was delicious.

She'd eaten most of her ta'ameya by the time they reached the hotel. She flung herself onto the bed and found herself laughing. "This was exactly how you expected your honeymoon to go, right?"

"I expected that it would be unusual. I merely didn't know in what particular manner it would be unusual." Remus sat down beside her on the bed.

She closed her eyes and snuggled contentedly against him. "What surprised you most? The lethifold, or getting thrown off the flying carpet?"

"Neither." She felt his body stiffen ever so slightly and she forced her eyes to open. "I was surprised by the form of your Patronus."

"My Patronus? It's always been a jackrabbit. You've seen it before, I used it dozens of times at Harry's birthday party last summer to send messages when we were getting the guests inside Grimmauld Place."

"I have seen it before," he agreed. It was an insufficient answer.

She sat up, cross legged, and stared at him. "You told me that you don't like to cast a corporeal Patronus because you don't like people to see its form. That's pretty silly, if you ask me, because I don't think that even before Umbridge plastered your name all over wizarding Britain anyone would have seen a big fluffy mammal and jumped right to werewolf."

"Wolves aren't fluffy. You sound like Sirius."

Tonks ignored him. "As I said, I think it's silly for you to hide your Patronus but it's none of my business and I did learn something last summer about letting you make that kind of decision for yourself. What I don't know is why you suddenly think my Patronus is odd."

"It changed the last time we were married," said Remus bluntly. "Before we were married. Long before we were married, your Patronus became a wolf."

"That's romantic." She drew her wand and twirled it between her fingers. "Are you worried that because it hasn't changed this time, I love you less? Because I can promise you, I don't love you less."

"You can't know that. You don't remember-"

"But I saw, and you told me! We know each other better this time because we aren't busy fighting a war. You told me that last time you never even met my friends. We didn't go on holiday, we didn't even- we would have known each other for two years when we got married last time, and you were off spying on werewolves for one of those years. Right?"

"That's right." He didn't exactly look happy at the memory, but he didn't exactly look sad, either.

"Maybe this time there's less style because there's more substance. But if it bothers you, feel free to have your Patronus become a jackrabbit. That would kill two birds with one stone, wouldn't it? You'd get rid of the Patronus form you don't like and you'd be able to prove that you love me."

"I don't think proving love works like that," he said unnecessarily.

"Then how does it work?" she prompted.

"I think it might work by making a little bit of effort every single day instead of by making a grand gesture every once in a while."

She thought of how patiently he'd waited for her to come to terms with the revelation that he had, somehow, married her before she'd ever met him. "I think you're right," she agreed.

_**To be continued.** _


	91. Sirius, Burning

"I'm going back to the cave to get Regulus' body," Sirius told Harry one summer morning. "Do you want to stay here, or do you want to go over to the Weasleys'?"

"Don't be stupid," said Harry. "I'm coming with you."

Sirius didn't argue. Harry was nearly sixteen and quite capable of knowing his own mind. He'd faced things more dangerous than inferi before. He'd even faced _inferi_ before.

"I haven't figured out a more efficient way to fight them than what we did last Christmas," Sirius explained. "It's going to be boring and dangerous at the same time."

"My favorite," said Harry. "I'll pack sandwiches and crisps for lunch. Hula Hoops or Golden Wonders?"

Sirius didn't know what Harry was talking about, so he told Harry just to bring everything.

* * *

The lake was less threatening in the summer than it had been in the winter. Sirius could almost see how some poor ignorant fool might think it would be a nice place for a picnic.

"Are you ready with _Incendio_ ?" Sirius asked Harry when they'd stowed the food in a cool corner of the cave.

Harry drew his wand and stood perfectly positioned beside the water. Neither one of them bothered to discuss the fact that Harry was still underage. The Ministry was never going to find them here. If the Ministry had done its job properly, there never would have been a lake of inferi in need of extermination in the first place.

(Sirius supposed that he could have notified the Ministry about the lake. Sirius didn't trust the Ministry that much. Besides, this was between him and Regulus now. When he found Regulus' body and buried it properly, he would never have to think about Regulus again.)

Sirius plunged his hand into the cold, dark water.

A dozen inferi rose as one.

 _Incendio_ . A girl about Harry's age, her hair matted and tangled.

 _Incendio_ . An enormous man with a hole drilled through his head.

 _Incendio_ . A short woman who had died wearing a brightly colored dress.

 _Incendio_ . Two old men, just alike.

 _Incendio_ . A child hunched over, braced for pain.

Sirius spared a second to glance at Harry. Harry, too, was casting as quickly as the inferi arose. He had been well-taught.

When they had disposed of the first wave of inferi, Sirius dipped his hand into the water once more and a second group emerged.

 _Incendio_ . This one had been a witch, dressed as she was in dragon hide. The dragon hide had held up well in the water. Sirius reminded himself to purchase dragon hide cloaks for himself and Harry, just in case.

 _Incendio_ . The dull-eyed Muggle had probably never known what had hit him. That was for the best.

 _Incendio_ . He looked like a child who had died clutching a toy. Sirius remembered again the street in London that Peter had blown up after James' and Lily's deaths. Three children had died in their matching school uniforms and one of them had had a toy horse in her hand.

So much death. So many variations on the same tragedy.

At least this time he hadn't had any role in causing the deaths.

His hand dipped into the water. The inferi began their inexorable march once more.

* * *

They destroyed inferi all morning long before retreating to the cave for lunch. Sirius wasn't really hungry, but he wanted Harry to eat and that meant he was going to force himself to eat, too.

"You don't think anyone has made more of them since we were here at Christmas, do you?" asked Harry as he produced the sandwiches, crisps, and some sort of Muggle fizzy drink that Sirius vaguely remembered as having been Lily's favorite.

"I don't see how that could be," said Sirius. "Voldemort is gone, and no one else had any reason to want an army of inferi right here. Did any of them look newly created to you?"

"No." Harry answered around a mouthful of sandwich. "But there are so many of them. We've been destroying them all morning, but there are always more. I know you burned loads of them at Christmas, too. There's only so many of them that could fit in the lake, right? Or could there be some kind of expansion charm on the lake, like on trunks or the backseat of the Weasleys' old car?"

Thinking through the problem was oddly soothing. Sirius took a bite of his own sandwich. "This lake is about the same size as the Black Lake at Hogwarts, wouldn't you say?"

Harry shrugged as if he had never in his life thought about or cared about the size of this or any other lake.

Sirius laughed. "Assume for the sake of argument that it's the same. The Black Lake at Hogwarts has a diameter of half a mile, correct?"

"How do you know that?" Harry demanded.

"An unfortunate plan involving the Giant Squid when I was your age." Sirius grinned at the memory. "If the diameter is half a mile, the surface area is more than five million square feet. In a mosh pit, each human being uses fewer than three square feet, meaning that if this was a Weird Sisters concert, we could fit well over a million-"

"How do you know how much space each person takes up in a mosh pit?"

"A bizarre conversation with my cousin Tonks. So, if the total population of the United Kingdom in 1981 was 46 million, even Muggles would have noticed if Voldemort stole a million corpses to create an army of inferi. In conclusion, there was never any need for an expansion charm but we aren't going to finish the job today."

"That was more than I needed to know," Harry decided. He threw a bag of crisps at Sirius.

Sirius turned the crisps over in his hand. "Where did you get all this Muggle food?"

Harry shrugged. "Honeydukes. I didn't realize I missed it until I saw it there." He tossed the package of Hula Hoops from one hand to the other before opening it and showing the contents to Sirius. The crisps were in the shape of short, hollow cylinders. "You put them on your fingers, like rings," he explained, demonstrating. "The first time Dudley tried it, he bit his fingers so hard that he needed stitches. So I always liked them."

As much as he knew that it wasn't really funny, Sirius laughed. "Did you tell your aunt and uncle that we'd come see them this summer to clean out your room and say goodbye?"

Another shrug. "All I said was that you adopted me so they didn't have to pick me up at King's Cross and I'd never live with them again."

"Do you want to clean out your room and say goodbye?"

Harry was suddenly less interested in his oddly-shaped crisps. "It was never really my room. It was Dudley's second bedroom until we were eleven, and after that I only slept there for a few weeks in the summer."

"You don't have to go back, of course," said Sirius. He thought that he did a fine job of keeping his voice perfectly neutral, of failing to betray that he wished that _he_ could go back to _his_ childhood home and ask _his_ superior sibling a thing or two. He'd learned two Christmases ago that projecting his own despicable childhood onto Harry's despicable childhood wasn't always especially useful. He'd thought that walking by Privet Drive would give Harry an opportunity to distance himself from the place the way Sirius had liked to pretend he'd distanced himself from Grimmauld Place. Instead, Harry had accused Sirius of changing his mind about wanting to adopt him and they'd had their only real row since Harry had realized that Sirius hadn't murdered his parents.

"But you think I should go back," guessed Harry.

"I do not," said Sirius. "It was a terrible idea that last time I suggested that you so much as walk by that house when you didn't need to, and on rare occasion I learn from my mistakes."

"I'd like to go back," Harry announced.

James would have said that just to soothe Sirius' feelings, and Harry wasn't James, so Sirius took Harry at his word.

Even though part of him was convinced that Harry was humoring him in a way he never wanted Harry to humor him.

He continued his internal debate all afternoon as he and Harry continued to destroy inferi.

* * *

They Apparated to Little Whinging the next morning, as two days of inferius-extermination in a row was a rather exhausting prospect. It was late morning when they arrived; Vernon Dursley's car was nowhere to be found, which was just as well. Petunia wasn't entirely clueless and Dudley wasn't entirely hopeless, so Sirius preferred the prospect of dealing with them without the distraction of Vernon's ignorant, impotent bluster.

They rang the doorbell like good Muggles, and Petunia answered quickly.

"I thought you weren't coming back," she said to Harry.

"Like I wanted to," Harry said, confirming to Sirius that he was being indulged.

"We wanted to make certain that his room had been properly cleaned out and that he hadn't left anything behind," Sirius injected.

"So you can pretend that I never existed," Harry added cheerily.

She pointed up the stairs. "I haven't touched it since you left. See that you do leave it clean."

They climbed the stairs and opened the door to the smallest bedroom.

It appeared that Petunia hadn't exaggerated. Lying in the middle of the bed was the Daily Prophet article Harry had left there.

_Boy Who Lived Lives It Up With Exclusive London Party_

_The famously reclusive Harry Potter, 15, has thrown himself what sources tell the Daily Prophet is his first real birthday celebration._

_"His parents weren't around when he was growing up and his Muggle relatives didn't understand what it meant to be the Boy Who Lived," a source reports. "Now that his godfather is back in his life, he's catching up on the experiences he missed."_

_The wild night had a Quidditch flavor as Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum and Puddlemere United Keeper Oliver Wood were in attendance. Also spotted was Cedric Diggory, who represented Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the recent Triwizard Tournament._

_The rest of the guest list was comprised of pretty girls in bikinis and skimpy tops. They began to leave the party at 7:00 a.m.; one was heard to mention that her family would be traveling to France in the afternoon._

_Rumor has it that the Boy Who Lived's very protective godfather, infamous Azkaban escapee Sirius Black, created a beach inside an unplottable building and kept Aurors and other defense experts on hand._

_"Nothing is more important to Sirius than Harry's safety," the source explains. "But he also wants Harry to have fun."_

_It appears as if fun was indeed had._

Harry reread the article with a smile on his face. "Who was the source?" he asked Sirius. "Andromeda?"

Sirius nodded. "She didn't tell them to park outside and take notes on who was on the guest list, but she gave them the quotes. We thought it was better to control the narrative. Do you disagree?"

"No." Harry re-folded the article and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans.

"Would you like another party this year?" Harry's birthday was fast approaching.

Harry shook his head. "It was great, but once was enough."

"Think about what you do want, then," Sirius instructed as they searched the room for any other trace of Harry.

They found very little. They banished a few old quills and poorly fitting hand-me-down trousers; there was nothing more. Fury burned deep inside Sirius.

He should have been around to spoil Harry.

Their home should have been packed to the gills with treasured outgrown toys and photographs and yellowing childhood drawings he'd hung on the wall and never taken down.

"Like I said." Harry's voice broke the silence. "I never really lived here."

* * *

Petunia was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. "Are we truly done with you now?" she asked Harry.

"Forget I ever existed," Harry confirmed.

"That shouldn't be hard," said Sirius. "As you barely seem to have noticed that he existed for his entire childhood."

Petunia's eyes narrowed. "I changed every nappy. I filled every bottle. I taught him how to hold a spoon and a fork. I bathed him. I potty-trained him. I dressed him. I took him to every appointment with the pediatrician and every appointment with the eye doctor. I saw that he was fed and clothed and educated. Can you say any of that?"

It wasn't as if Sirius didn't already know that he couldn't.

"And I never was given a choice in the matter," Petunia continued. "Your Dumbledore quite literally left him on my front step. Vernon and I didn't get to say yes or no. We hadn't decided yet whether we wanted another child- I wanted Dudley to be our only child, but Vernon grew up with a sister and had thoughts of having a second. We were going to wait until Dudders was at least three to decide. But you- your kind- with your special powers and your decrees from on high- decided that Vernon and I couldn't decide what sort of family we wanted. That isn't for us mere Muggles, is it? It's for the wizards who rule over us."

She was repulsive.

She wasn't entirely wrong.

He thought that he would do better than Petunia had done if Regulus' long-lost child had been left in his doorway, but as badly as he had misjudged Regulus, could he be sure that he would have?

"Do you understand," he asked as quietly as he could, "that your sister died fighting a man who did want wizards to rule over Muggles? That she and James died because that was _not_ what they believed?"

"I do not want to hear anything about my sainted little sister," said Petunia, but her voice wobbled.

He laughed humorlessly. "I never wanted to hear about my sainted little brother, either. Regulus and Lily were friends for almost a week once. I believe they mostly discussed how annoying I am. Then Regulus called her a mudblood- horrible word, used by the sort of person who believes that people born into magical families are inherently superior- and they weren't friends anymore. The odd thing is, Regulus died the same way Lily did. Fighting Voldemort. It took Harry to kill him, though, and he did it last spring. That's why he doesn't need your protection any longer. That's why you never need to see him again."

"Good," said Petunia. She opened the door.

Harry and Sirius left.

They'd barely turned the corner at the end of Privet Drive when they heard heavy footsteps pounding behind them. Sirius instinctively drew his wand; Harry didn't bother. Harry had sensed that it was Dudley.

"I didn't think you were home, Big D," said Harry.

"I was hiding in the kitchen, eavesdropping," said Dudley. "Like you always used to do."

Harry didn't deny it.

"I read the article you left on your bed. The one about your birthday last year."

"You knew I was having a party," said Harry. "You were surprised that I knew any girls."

"Yeah, but I didn't understand… you're really famous."

"In the wizarding world."

"Because your parents died fighting a horrible wizard, and you were the one who finished him off?"

"Sort of," said Harry.

"Yes," corrected Sirius.

"I had help," said Harry.

"I still don't really get it," said Dudley. "But… you're safe now? And happy?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

Dudley held out his hand. Harry shook it.

"So I'll never see you again?" asked Dudley.

"You suddenly want to send me a Christmas card?"

"What if I did?"

Harry looked at Sirius. "What if he did?"

Sirius looked at Dudley. "You'd address the card to Hogwarts School in Scotland. The Ministry of Magic will have a way of getting it out of the Muggle post and converting it to owl post."

"Okay," said Dudley. "See you, then." And Dudley went back the way he had come.

* * *

Harry and Sirius went back to the lake the next day. Harry had been quiet all evening, clearly not ready to discuss Dudley's surprising overture of friendship. Harry attacked the inferi with renewed vigor, as if every one of them was his Uncle Vernon; Sirius resumed his contemplation.

 _Incendio_ . An old woman who somehow carried herself upright despite her transformation.

 _Incendio_ . An old man curled in on himself like a snail.

 _Incendio_ . A young man whose bones bore the distinct markers of having been broken many times.

 _Incendio_ . A body so deformed that Sirius could make no guess about what had brought it here.

 _Incendio_ . Had that man's hands been cut off in life, or had they fallen off in death?

As the sun rose high in the sky, the inferi became fewer and fewer. Harry left his hand in the water for a full minute, passing it back and forth, before an inferius swept up to lunge at him and Sirius had to act quickly to avert a real problem.

That was when Sirius deemed it time for lunch. He had gotten Rosmerta to pack it today, so there were no odd Muggle crisps included.

"You didn't answer me yesterday," Sirius said to Harry as they unpacked the food. "What would you like to do for your birthday?"

"I don't need to celebrate it," said Harry. "You don't celebrate yours."

Sirius didn't let Harry change the subject. "You said that you didn't want another big party, and that's fine. But you can at least have a day with Ron and Hermione."

"Ron's family has to go to France to meet with Fleur's family before Bill and Fleur get married. Hermione is with Krum again."

"Oh." That made sense. It was a common problem with summer birthdays, Sirius supposed; they did often conflict with holiday plans. Wormtail had used to complain bitterly about not being able to celebrate his birthday at Hogwarts like Sirius, James, and Remus. "Shouldn't Krum be getting ready for the Quidditch season?"

"He is," said Harry. "They're going to fly through the Balkan Mountains. Hermione and the other girlfriends and boyfriends are going to go along in a flying carriage like Beauxbatons has. They invited me to come. Said I could just keep Hermione company, or else Krum would get special permission for me to train with the team. Said he'd tell his manager I was good enough to be a professional."

"Don't you want to go?"

It was all over Harry's face that Harry wanted to go. Harry loved flying. Harry loved Quidditch. Harry had had so few of the joyful experiences that he should have had…

"You're going," Sirius decided.

"Regulus is more important," said Harry stubbornly.

"I'll take care of Regulus." The words felt odd in his mouth. When had he last said them? At the age of ten?

"Not by yourself! What if-"

"Moony will be back from his honeymoon soon. Tonks will have to go back to work, so he'll be bored out of his mind if I don't invite him along."

Harry looked mollified.

Then he grinned.

"I'll owl Krum and Hermione tonight," he said.

Sirius had had three goals for the summer: he'd wanted Remus and Tonks to have a successful wedding, he'd wanted Harry to have a happy birthday, and he'd wanted Regulus to have a peaceful burial.

He was two-thirds of the way there.

_**To be continued.** _


	92. Sirius, Burning 2

Sirius hadn't meant to lie to Harry when he'd told him that he would ask Remus to help him recover Regulus' body. He'd thought that he was telling the truth. He'd intended to ask Remus for help, and he knew that Remus would have been more than willing.

But every time Sirius considered raising the subject with Remus, he stopped himself.

The inferi were mostly gone- perhaps they were entirely gone. He was so close to achieving his goal.

He was probably safe.

He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.

And Remus was newly married and deserved to spend all of his time rhapsodizing over his new wife.

Above all, Regulus had been Sirius' brother and no one else's. Remus wouldn't understand. Remus had been the adored only child of doting parents. Remus didn't know what it was like to share his every childhood breath with someone who, in the end, despised and confused him. Remus couldn't begin to fathom how it felt to know that a part of you- a part of you that you'd never asked for and didn't want- was gone forever, leaving questions and pain and feelings that could never be untangled.

Remus would try to say something comforting, or would try to make a joke, and it would make everything worse.

So Remus wasn't invited when Sirius made his way to the hidden lake for the last time.

* * *

No matter how Sirius tried, he could find no more inferi. Spells revealed nothing. He could not see that which still lurked beneath the surface of the water, nor could he summon it.

And so Sirius appropriated the boat Harry and Dumbledore had used to retrieve Regulus' locket. Next, he conjured a net and several grappling hooks and began the most morbid fishing expedition of his life.

(His previous fishing expeditions had been limited to seeking out his dinner while in dog form and on the run from the Ministry. Still, even if he had made a habit of fishing as a hobby, this would have been his most morbid expedition.)

He searched first near the flat stone island at the center of the lake. The basin was once again full of emerald green potion. Here, Regulus had drunk cup after cup.

Had Regulus cried out in pain?

Did Sirius care if he had?

Had Regulus thought only of his quest to stop Voldemort? Or had he thought of his friends, his hopes, his Quidditch team, their school, their parents? Had he thought of Sirius?

Did it matter if he had?

The hooks caught on something near the base of the island.

Sirius gulped down the bile that rose in his throat. He ignored the tension in his neck. He fought through the sudden numbness in his hands. Magic failed; he used his own strength to pull the net and the hooks from the murky depths of the water. He was a thing apart from himself, a thing apart from the world.

The hooks and their heavy burden broke the water's surface with a roaring splash. Sirius gasped- it was worse than he had thought- and then he truly looked at what he had found.

It was a tangled mass of sweet wrappers, plastic bags, and strands of wire wrapped around a tire that must have belonged to a Muggle automobile.

There was no body.

There was no Regulus.

He vanished the mess and sank back into the boat, breathing deeply, staring unwillingly at the basin of green liquid. He had a ridiculous urge to taste it and experience what Regulus had experienced. If Regulus could do it, so could Sirius.

He let the boat bump up against the island and climbed out, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that warned him that if the boat drifted away, he would be stranded. He had lied to Harry. He hadn't told Remus where he was, let alone brought Remus along.

The island was twice the size of his cell in Azkaban, and every bit as cold and salty. There were fewer dementors, which was nice. All in all, he determined that starving to death here would be better than starving to death in Azkaban.

The island seemed to shake beneath his legs as he walked its perimeter. He wished for Harry or Remus, or even Andromeda or Tonks. They could have told him whether the shaking was on the flat stones or in his own body.

At last, he drew closer to the basin and leaned over to peer inside. In the bright light of the beautiful summer day, he could see his reflection.

"I'm finally green enough for you, huh, Regulus?" he asked to distract himself from the fact that he looked terrified and he didn't like to look terrified.

He wasn't going to taste the potion. He wasn't quite that crazy.

He climbed back into the boat and resumed steering in slow circles, further and further away from the island.

The next time his hooks caught on something, he decided to assume that it was more litter. At least, he pretended to himself that he assumed that it was more litter. It was easier that way. He clawed inside himself for the detached feeling he'd had earlier in the day. He wished that he could turn into a dog. He wished that he could get drunk. But he hadn't brought any firewhiskey, and dogs weren't very good at using nets and hooks.

This time it was a skeleton. The skeleton was short and its hips were broad. Definitely female. Not Regulus.

Would it be more respectful to return her to her watery grave or to move her to the island? He couldn't take her home. He didn't know where her home was or when she had died. He also couldn't interrupt his search for Regulus, not now, not when he was so close.

He let her sink back to the bottom of the lake.

His search continued. About halfway between the island and the cave, he uncovered a broken boat. Had it belonged to the mysterious female skeleton? Had it belonged to someone who had, like Regulus, wanted to stop Voldemort?

Should he destroy it, as he had destroyed the tire, or should he let it rest where it had been, as he had the skeleton? There were too many decisions to be made. He wanted to go home and sleep. He wanted firewhiskey. He wanted his canine form.

He let the broken boat sink back to the floor of the lake. That was easiest.

The fourth time his hooks snagged against the lake bottom, he was halfway between the island and the far shore. He gave his net a practiced pull.

The skeleton came to the surface easily. He knew at a glance that it was Regulus. The expensive robes that Regulus always wore-trimmed with a bit of Slytherin green and the Black family crest- had faded, but they hadn't decayed. They looked better than some of the shit Remus had worn before Sirius had taken over control of his wardrobe.

Sirius could see his brother's face in the naked skull. He could see his brother's sneer in the teeth. (He wanted to see his brother's smile. But he saw the sneer instead, and that was how it was.)

He hoisted the body into the boat, shuddering as he did so. He had firewhiskey in Hogsmeade. He would drink until he couldn't feel the cold, clammy robes against his skin. He would drink until he'd forgotten the hollow eye sockets that had once belonged to Regulus. He would drink until there was no more exposed bone where there should have been flesh.

The boat sped back to the cave. Sirius lifted Regulus into his arms and staggered beneath the weight, although Regulus wasn't heavy. He'd always been shorter and thinner than Sirius.

 _Built like a Seeker,_ Harry would have said.

Sirius put Regulus down before he dropped him. Then he transformed into the dog.

His emotions became less complex, as they always did when he took this form. The salty smell of the water and the dank smell of the cave and the rotten smell of Regulus' robes were stronger, but that was a small price to pay… Regulus' robes.

He could _smell_ Regulus. It was sickening. All at once, he remembered every cutting remark, every insult, every hex, every time Regulus had smirked as their parents had praised him at Sirius' expense.

But this wasn't the time to dwell on the echoes of long-forgotten scents. It was time to figure out how to leave this miserable cave behind forever.

He couldn't very well swim while dragging along Regulus' remains. The remains were too fragile; too much movement would rip the skeleton to pieces.

Regulus would have to leave the way Regulus had come.

Sirius transformed back to his human form and shouted at the sky. " _Kreacher_ !"

Kreacher appeared on the ledge with a pop. His bulbous eyes widened. "Master Sirius has done as he said he would do. Master Sirius has found Master Regulus."

"Yes," said Sirius. His voice echoed inside his head. He was suddenly far away, too far away to care what Kreacher said or did or thought. "I can't Apparate here. I'd have to swim back to the cliff with his body. Can you take him home?"

Kreacher bowed low, his tears splashing down on the rock ledge. "Kreacher will take you both home." He cocked his head at Sirius. "Master should have let Kreacher bring him here."

It was a gentler reprimand than Sirius was used to getting from Kreacher, and so he let it pass. "Just take Regulus home. I'll get myself out of here."

"Master Sirius is going to swim?"

"Master Sirius is going to swim," Sirius repeated.

"Master Sirius is not well. Master Sirius could drown like Master Regulus, and what would Kreacher's mistress say-"

"She'd say it finally happened to the right son."

Kreacher ignored Sirius. Sirius was not surprised. "Master Sirius must have fought the hands that dragged Master Regulus beneath the water."

Sirius nodded. "They're gone now. They can't hurt anyone."

"Master Sirius is very, very brave."

"Who are you and what have you done with Kreacher?"

"Master Sirius is also foolish."

"Oh, there you are."

"Master Sirius is tired. Master Sirius is unwell. Master Sirius must not swim to the cliff. Kreacher must take Master Sirius and Master Regulus home."

Sirius couldn't deny that he was tired. His arms ached from tugging on the net and hooks. His legs ached from the way he tucked himself into the boat. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. Above all, he was tired of his thoughts. Tired of Regulus. Tired of his parents. Tired of war and death and the sea air and the rocky shore.

If Kreacher killed him while transporting him back to Grimmauld Place, so what? At least it would be over. It would be a relief.

"All right, Kreacher," he said at last. He extended his hand. "Bring Regulus and me home."

* * *

The world spun, and Sirius found himself staring at the wall in the entryway of 12 Grimmauld Place. Staring at the wall seemed like a good way to spend the rest of the day. He didn't have any desire to do anything else. It had been a long time since he'd felt so utterly drained of all energy.

Kreacher resumed wailing loudly for Regulus. _"Master Regulus, you are home, you are finally home. Kreacher has done as you asked, Kreacher has destroyed the locket as you wished. It is as you wanted, Master Regulus."_

The noise woke Walburga's portrait. Walburga's voice sent a sharp pain through his head. _"My Regulus? Where is my Regulus? My Regulus is dead, my Regulus must be dead!"_

Sirius dragged himself down the hall and stared again at the portrait. "I've brought Regulus home," he said before realizing that ignoring the portrait would have been a far better course of action.

" _Liar_ !" the portrait screamed. Whatever improvements Badeea had made were not presently evident to Sirius. _"Filth! How dare you tell tales about Regulus, my Regulus, you did not find him, you could not find him-"_

"Mistress," Kreacher croaked beside Sirius. "Master Sirius has brought Master Regulus home." He levitated Regulus' body, still clad in the water-ravaged robes, so that the portrait would see it.

At once, Walburga quieted. Her tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

Kreacher, too, wept.

Sirius didn't cry. Sirius stared at the wall and felt dizzy until he felt nothing at all.

* * *

Sirius blinked awake to find that he was in a soft, clean bed.

His heart rate sped up and panic caught in his throat. He was in his childhood bedroom in Grimmauld Place. The room should have been musty and it was not. It was bright and free of dust and almost pleasant.

Another stab of pain shot through his head. What was wrong with him?

He hadn't drunk the potion, had he? He'd considered it in a crazed, stressed moment, but he hadn't done it. And he hadn't been stranded on the island in the middle of the lake. The boat had been right there waiting for him, and perhaps he would have been able to swim away from the island in any case. With the inferi eliminated, immersing oneself in the water might not have caused an immediate threat.

But perhaps there had been something toxic in Regulus' body after it had spent so many years in the water with the inferi? Perhaps that was what had broken his mind? He didn't remember coming to this room. He knew the room shouldn't have been so clean.

He also didn't remember falling asleep, but the remnants of a dream needled his skin. He and Regulus had been working side by side. Working at what, he wasn't certain, but Regulus had been there and there had been no animosity. The dream wasn't right. The room wasn't right.

He pulled himself upright and put his feet on the floor with a rush of anger. Regulus wasn't supposed to feature in Sirius' nightmares. Sirius' nightmares were the place where he saw James. Regulus had no business usurping James' place in Sirius' mind. Sirius' grief was for James, and for Lily, not for Regulus.

Was Regulus going to walk into the room and kill him? Regulus was a Death Eater. That was what Death Eaters did. Regulus had turned his back on Voldemort because he'd loved Kreacher (no accounting for taste), not because he'd decided that he didn't want to kill anyone.

"Kreacher?" Sirius whispered. The hook in his chest felt normal, at least. Unpleasant. But normal.

Kreacher arrived carrying a tray of roast lamb, potatoes, and vegetables.

This was wrong. Sirius wasn't in Grimmauld Place. He was in an alternate dimension. Or a prison. The only question was whether he was in a physical, magical prison or a prison of his own mind's making.

"Master Sirius does not like roast lamb any longer?" Kreacher asked. "Kreacher made it the way Master Sirius used to prefer it, with garlic and rosemary butter and red wine gravy. The garlic and bay leaves and Gruyère for the potatoes dauphinoise came from the Hogwarts kitchens, but Pitts did not mind when Kreacher explained, he said there was too much during the summer."

"It looks wonderful, Kreacher," said Sirius, and it did. Kreacher placed the food on a tray beside Sirius' bed. "Kreacher, did you- did you clean up in here?"

"Kreacher has just started," said the elf enthusiastically. "It is not good for Master to breathe in so much dust. Master fainted in the hallway. Kreacher brought him upstairs to rest."

That explained that, anyway, little as he liked the idea of being put to bed by his parents' house-elf. "Thank you, Kreacher." Kreacher bowed reverently. "What of- what of Regulus?"

"Kreacher found better robes for Master Regulus and has put him in his own bed."

So Sirius and Regulus had both been put in their childhood bedrooms by the family elf, but Sirius might be out of his mind and Regulus was most definitely dead.

Did Kreacher remember that they weren't children? Did Kreacher know that Regulus was dead?

"We'll bury Regulus beside our parents. I think they'll all like that," said Sirius cautiously.

Kreacher bowed low once more, and tears filled his red-rimmed eyes. "Yes, Master."

So at least Kreacher knew that Regulus was dead. That was something.

"The plot is private. The Ministry doesn't need to know."

Another bow. "Kreacher understands."

"Tomorrow, perhaps?" The less time his brother's skeleton spent in his childhood bed, the better.

"As Master wishes." Kreacher nodded again at the food. "Would Master like wine? Or is water sufficient?"

"Water is fine."

But water wasn't fine. The sound of water still filled his ears. It was lapping outside his cell in Azkaban. It was filling Regulus' lungs. It was pouring from the eyes of Walburga's portrait. It was dragging all of the Blacks back to their natural element.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note : So when I'm in jail because my internet search history is full of phrases about how quickly a body decomposes in cold water, you'll tell the police about this fic, won't you? Oh, and that webpage about how to drag a lake for a body that I accidentally left up overnight isn't making me look too good, either… At least the part where I was looking at the BBC's lamb recipes is more innocent?


	93. Sirius, Leaving

The next day Sirius determined that he wasn't mad or dead or hallucinating after all. He had only been exhausted and disconcerted by Kreacher's sudden solicitousness.

It was almost over. He had almost done his dubious duty by Regulus; soon, he wouldn't have to think about his brother ever again. His conscience would be clear. His dreams would be untroubled.

He laughed aloud as he reached for the Floo Powder. He wasn't quite deluded enough to believe that the ghosts of his family would ever be entirely done with him.

He knelt before the fire and called for Andromeda. After a moment, she appeared. "Sirius? What is it?"

"I need to invite you to a funeral this afternoon."

"A funeral for whom?"

"For Regulus."

She looked confused, and then concerned, and then almost amused. "Shall we notify all the best pureblood families?"

"We shan't notify anyone. I- recovered his body. It belongs with our parents."

Andromeda nodded stiffly. "All right, Sirius. But for you, not for Regulus and not for your parents."

Her condition was oddly comforting. "Will you meet me there? I'd rather Apparate with you, but I need to bring the coffin from Grimmauld Place." The coffin had been gathering dust in the attic. Kreacher had cleaned it; Sirius had done some transfiguration and charmwork to make it more fitting for Regulus. Not that Sirius really claimed to know what Regulus would have found fitting, but Kreacher had been pleased.

Sirius had also carved a note to Regulus in the inside of the coffin. _His match has been met. Your death was not in vain._

Andromeda grimaced in a manner most unlike a Black heiress. "I'll be there. Be careful, Sirius."

"I'll do my best."

* * *

The Black Family Graveyard was, like most things Black, unplottable. Sirius hadn't seen it in twenty years, but nonetheless he gripped the coffin tightly and concentrated.

His ears burned unpleasantly as the graveyard spun into view around him. He supposed that that nearly splinching himself was a proper tribute to Regulus. Regulus always had enjoyed Sirius' every mistake.

He felt the tension in the air before he was able to focus his eyes and make note of the source.

Andromeda stood beside him near the entrance of the graveyard.

Narcissa stood ten feet away near the newest of the headstones.

Sirius swore under his breath. _"Why is she here?"_ he whispered.

 _"I certainly didn't invite her,"_ Andromeda whispered back. _"I couldn't, could I? She hasn't acknowledged my existence since she was a child."_

He considered fleeing the scene. They could return later. Regulus wouldn't know the difference.

But Narcissa had already seen them, and he wasn't about to offer Narcissa any sort of victory. Narcissa had already won twice: once when her brat Draco had shown Harry up in Madam Malkin's by addressing Sirius as his cousin, and once in the Ministry when her ridiculous husband had mocked him for getting the dementors removed from Azkaban.

"Hello, Narcissa," he said, brazen as he could be. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Kreacher was good enough to extend an invitation to me." She beamed beatifically at the house-elf, who prostrated himself before her.

"Did you, Kreacher?" Sirius asked. The world made sense again. Kreacher had been far too kind as of late.

"Miss Narcissa and Master Regulus were always the best of friends," said Kreacher.

"I didn't ask you to invite Miss Narcissa."

"Master told Kreacher not to notify the Ministry. Master did not tell Kreacher not to notify Miss Narcissa."

"Not notify the Ministry?" asked Narcissa, an expression of mock-surprise on her face. "Why ever would you give Kreacher such an order, Cousin? Surely you've nothing to hide. Surely you didn't murder your brother the way you murdered my sister."

It was then that Sirius noticed the gleaming headstone strewn with fresh flowers. _Bellatrix Black Lestrange._ By tradition, Bella ought to have been buried beside her husband's family. That Narcissa had broken tradition told him… something. He wasn't precisely sure what. But something.

"We can summon the Ministry right now if you're concerned about propriety," Sirius said. Best to call Narcissa's bluff right off. She didn't want to talk to the Ministry any more than he did. It was entirely possible that she didn't want her husband to know that she was here.

Besides, he was innocent.

Not that his innocence had ever mattered in the past.

"I don't imagine that that will be necessary," said Narcissa.

"Are you quite certain? If I've murdered Regulus, and you watch as I bury him, I do believe that you'll become what is called an _accessory after the fact_ ."

"I'm quite certain," said Narcissa. "Family matters must be handled by the family."

"Are we family?" asked Sirius. It was his turn to pretend shock.

" _Regulus_ was my family," Narcissa returned.

"Does Miss Narcissa wish to view the body?" Kreacher warbled. The Blacks had some rather morbid traditions surrounding death. Cutting off their house-elves' heads was the least of it.

"Yes, please, Kreacher."

Kreacher raised the lid of the coffin. Sirius didn't look inside; he had seen enough. Instead, he watched Narcissa. He watched her try to reconcile the shape of the skull with the face in her memory. He watched her succeed. He watched her betray the tiniest flicker of grief. (Kreacher wasn't wrong. Narcissa and Regulus had always been good friends.)

Andromeda didn't bother to approach the coffin. Sirius didn't bother ordering Kreacher to invite Andromeda to approach.

"You believe that this is Master Regulus, Kreacher?" Narcissa asked after a moment.

"Kreacher knows that this is Master Regulus. Kreacher saw Master Regulus die." There was a pause as Kreacher considered his options. "Master Sirius did not kill Master Regulus."

"All right, then," said Narcissa.

"You'll deign to allow us to proceed, then?" asked Sirius.

Narcissa gestured wordlessly at the row of gravestones.

_Orion Black, 1929-1979_

_Walburga Black, 1925-1985_

_Together in life and death._

Sirius had never seen his parents' graves before. But at the moment, with Narcissa and Kreacher far too close for comfort, he didn't have time to have any feelings about it. Instead, he raised his wand, preparing to clear a space beside Orion and Walburga for Regulus.

Narcissa cleared her throat.

"Yes, Narcissa?" he asked.

"You wouldn't know because you weren't… present at either of your parents' burials, but their coffins aren't precisely beneath the headstone. You're about to cut Aunt Walburga in half."

Because Sirius wanted this to be over as quickly as possible, he refrained from explaining that that would have been the manifestation of all of his childhood dreams. "Would you prefer to open the grave yourself?" he asked.

"I would prefer it to seeing any of my deceased relatives' bodies, yes," said Narcissa.

With a sweeping gesture, Sirius stepped aside.

Narcissa used a single spell to dig a hole three feet wide, six feet long, and eight feet deep. Narcissa, after all, wasn't stupid; she was just annoying and occasionally dangerous.

In turn, Sirius lowered Regulus' coffin into the hole. As he did, he was forced to acknowledge that Narcissa was correct. He hadn't been at his parents' funerals or their interments. He hadn't been at anything of the sort since James' parents had died shortly after James' wedding.

(Fucking dragon pox.)

Andromeda and Narcissa and Kreacher were all looking at him, ready to take their cues from him.

"It would be disingenuous of me to say that my brother and I never exchanged an unkind word," he said. "I didn't understand him and he didn't understand me. But I know that he died for a cause he believed in, and it is only fitting that he is finally at rest beside his parents who loved him more than-"

_More than they loved me._

"More than they loved anything else in this world."

Andromeda and Narcissa bowed their heads. Kreacher wept.

"I would like to invite all those present to share their fondest memory of Regulus."

He didn't realize what a stupid thing he'd said until he'd said it. He'd be expected to begin, and if his life had depended upon it in that instant, he couldn't have conjured up a happy memory of Regulus. It would have been easier for him to eulogize _Bellatrix_ . At least he'd had the time she'd held him after he'd nearly blown up his family's home. But all he could think of was Regulus smirking in delight as Sirius was punished. Regulus, squirming out of Sirius' grip when Sirius had been told to mind his younger brother. Regulus, reporting Sirius' every sin to their parents.

The silence stretched.

At the last moment, Sirius managed to remember the day their parents had sent them to the countryside with a flying tutor so that they would be properly prepared for their first flying class at Hogwarts. It wouldn't have done for the heirs to the House of Black to fall from their brooms in front of their less-worthy classmates. "Regulus was magnificent on a broom. He flew better than I did from the time we had our first lesson, and I didn't appreciate it. I was older and I ought to have been better at everything immediately. Our tutor praised him and had a number of unkind words for me. And when I finally properly executed a liftoff and landing to his satisfaction, Regulus cheered for me. He could have gloated, but instead he cheered. And when our tutor told him off for complimenting me for merely achieving what was expected, Regulus smiled."

He didn't look at Andromeda or Narcissa. He didn't care what they thought. "Andromeda?" he prompted.

"I've been thinking about the day Regulus was born," said Andromeda. "Our parents wanted a photograph of the five of us together as soon as possible. They put Sirius in Bellatrix's arms, of course. Bellatrix demanded it. That left me to hold Regulus. And he was the sweetest, most well-behaved baby you could have invented. He was as patient as the day was long. And I am sorry for him that there were so few years between that day and the day he died."

Sirius smirked inwardly. Andromeda's tribute to Regulus had been even less personal than his tribute had been. She hadn't been able to think of a single memory that had taken place after Regulus had been old enough to walk or talk?

But then, Regulus hadn't been her brother.

"Narcissa?" Sirius asked. He didn't really expect her to answer. But she did.

"I remember one afternoon when Bellatrix was in a rage. Regulus made fun of her, and I laughed, so she locked us both in the closet." Narcissa chuckled fondly. Sirius reflected on how fucked up it was that Narcissa revered Bellatrix for having locked her in a closet. "Regulus said that we should sing until she let us out. I pointed out that she would simply cast a silencing charm so that she wouldn't have to listen. He told me that we weren't singing for her, we were singing for us. And we sang the silliest songs we knew. I never liked to sing with anyone but Regulus. I never laughed as hard as I did with Regulus. And I was ever so glad to have had him as my cousin."

Sirius was stunned as he made the dirt fall back into place over the shining coffin. He knew, now, why Narcissa had come.

She'd come because she'd loved Regulus.

* * *

Both Narcissa and Andromeda Apparated away without another word. He wasn't surprised by Narcissa, but he'd hoped that Andromeda would, as was her usual fashion, invite him to her home for the evening. He usually refused; this time he would have gone.

But he supposed that breathing the same air as Narcissa, and seeing Bellatrix's headstone, and knowing that her only child was just married and beginning a new life was enough for Andromeda. She didn't need to cope with Sirius too.

* * *

When he received an owl from Badeea Ali asking to visit Grimmauld place and his mother's portrait, he accepted against his better judgment.

He wanted to be alone, but more than that he wanted the portrait to remain as quiet as it had been since the moment he had presented it with Regulus' skeleton draped in waterlogged robes.

Badeea stared at the portrait as if she did not know what to make of it. "Do you have any idea why she's crying?" Badeea asked. "Has something changed since-"

"She found out for certain that my brother Regulus is dead," Sirius interrupted brusquely before Badeea could continue. "Not merely lost, but dead."

Badeea brightened and cast a spell.

The portrait remained quiet, overpowering in its grief.

There was no name-calling even when Sirius attempted to provoke it.

It was quiet.

Was that better, after all?

* * *

He paid Badeea a handsome sum nonetheless. He had wanted the portrait to shut its mouth, and shut its mouth it had.

* * *

When he returned to the cottage in Hogsmeade, he found several days' worth of owl post awaiting him. It seemed like there ought to have been several years' worth.

On top of the pile was a message from Flagstone Dueling Club- when had he last attended?- reminding members that if they were interested in competing on the world circuit this autumn, they needed to notify Hestia as soon as possible.

Sirius shook his head and tossed the message aside. James was the one who would have enjoyed that sort of thing. Sirius had no interest in being Sirius Black: World Ranked Duelist.

There was a postcard sent by Remus and Tonks from Egypt; there was another sent by Harry from Bulgaria.

Next he skimmed through several editions of the Daily Prophet. He found little of interest. They had managed the get a photograph of Harry and Krum flying side by side, but the article wasn't particularly offensive:

_**The Boy Who Lived's Balkan Holiday** _

_Harry Potter has decided to celebrate his sixteenth birthday by training with international Quidditch sensation Viktor Krum, 19, sources have told the Daily Prophet. The pair met two years ago when Krum, then a student at the Durmstrang Institute, traveled to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. Prophet readers will recall that Krum returned to the United Kingdom for Potter's fifteenth birthday party last year._

_Some have speculated that Potter and Krum have bonded over their shared experience of being world-famous as schoolboys. Other rumors have it that the two are in fact entangled in a love triangle- Krum's longtime girlfriend, Hogwarts student Hermione Granger, is also known to be a close confidante of Potter's. But we at the Prophet accept the simplest explanation: Krum and Potter both love Quidditch._

_A professional Quidditch scout, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, tells us that Potter has the ability to join Krum on the Quidditch pitch sooner rather than later. "He couldn't quite keep up when he was going through flying drills with the professionals, but he was much, much closer than you could expect from your average schoolboy," the scout raves. "When he leaves Hogwarts in two years, he'll have his pick of teams. I don't think his flying for England in the next World Cup is out of the question."_

_That's if Potter's overprotective godfather, the infamous Sirius Black, approves of Quidditch as a career. "I understand that Potter was at a Puddlemere United match last year," our scout continues. "Oliver Wood was Potter's teammate at Hogwarts, and Wood implied that Potter's Quidditch skills were sufficient to play professionally. As I've already said, I agree with Wood's assessment. But Black shut that conversation down so hard he had half of that locker room shaking in their boots. He said Potter was going to worry about his OWLs and his NEWTs, not about playing Quidditch."_

_Luckily, the Boy Who Lived can enjoy a few more weeks of summer before he returns to Hogwarts for the new term- when we're quite certain he'll apply himself to NEWT-level work with his usual understated excellence._

Sirius threw the article aside for Harry to read when he returned.

* * *

Harry returned tired and windburned and laughing. He was full of stories about how much he'd enjoyed flying with Krum and Krum's teammates. He smiled at the Daily Prophet's photograph even as he rolled his eyes at the rest of the article.

"I wish they'd leave Hermione out of it," he said. "She hates this kind of thing."

"And you?" asked Sirius. "Don't you also hate this kind of thing?"

"Yes," said Harry. "But I think I'm getting used to it." He tossed the newspaper back onto the table and examined the mail beneath it with interest. "Are you going to duel internationally this year?"

"Of course not." Sirius didn't know why he hadn't burned the advertisement. "I'd have to go to Japan for half of September. I'd never do anything that took me that far away from you."

"But I'd be at school."

"You were at school when a former Death Eater tried to kill you."

Harry looked at Sirius with concern. "But Voldemort is gone now. Most of the Death Eaters are gone. Unless you're worried about Lucius Malfoy, but you said he wouldn't do anything without checking which way the wind was blowing."

"That sounds like something I would say," Sirius admitted.

"What about Regulus?" Harry pushed. "Were you able to-"

"I retrieved his body and he's been buried beside our parents. It's over with. Now that you're back from your world tour, shouldn't we make plans to get to Diagon Alley and pick up your books for next year?"

Harry permitted the change of subject. Sirius contented himself with the knowledge that he hadn't really lied to Harry about going after Regulus without help. They simply hadn't discussed the subject in any depth.

* * *

Harry's OWLs were a pleasant mix of Os and Es. They came along with formal confirmation that Harry was to be Gryffindor's Quidditch Captain for the next two years, and Harry and Sirius made certain to evaluate all of Quality Quidditch Supplies' newest offerings even before purchasing a stack of thick, heavy textbooks. The rest of their day in Diagon Alley was spent in the Weasley twins' new shop. Fred greeted them at the door, leaving George to handle the other customers, and told them to pick out whatever they liked, for no charge.

"Not much of an offer," Sirius pointed out, "as most of your products were sitting unprotected in my home for most of the last year."

"There have been new developments since that time," Fred informed them loftily. "Fancy a pygmy puff?"

Sirius did not fancy a pygmy puff, but judging by the squeals of the nine-year-old girls surrounding the pygmy puffs' cage, the twins had entered into yet another profitable line of business.

"Sorry you weren't able to make the grand opening, mate," Fred continued. "I know you were avoiding Mum, but she'll cool off eventually. In fact, Fleur Delacour has already replaced you as her least favorite person."

"You didn't go to France with the rest of your family?" Harry asked before Sirius could say something to make it sound as if he wasn't avoiding Molly Weasley. _I had a wedding and a funeral to plan_ seemed rather too defensive.

Fred shook his head. "George and I needed to stay here with the new business. Percy said he had to work, too. So it's really only Ron and Ginny who got dragged along." He smirked. "Though Ron doesn't mind so much now that he's met Fleur's friend's little sister. Ginny's furious. Sends us an owl every day, every one of them angrier than the last one."

"Fleur's not so bad," Harry said.

"I wouldn't say that to Ginny if I were you…"

Sirius stopped listening and let his eyes wander, half-focused, around the shop.

James would have loved it.

James should have been here.

The painful longing for James was a relief. He'd spent most of the past fortnight focused on Regulus. Now James was back where he belonged: always at the edge of his consciousness, always a knife in his chest.

* * *

He missed James again the next evening when he watched Harry leaf eagerly through his new copy of _Advanced Potion Making_ . James should have been retelling that old, tired joke about how even though the family's fortune came from Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment, it would never work on his hair and that was fine because his hair was perfect the way it was.

Sirius was startled out of his reverie when a polite knock sounded on their door. He was tempted to tell whoever it was to bugger off, but Harry had already recognized Dumbledore and welcomed him inside.

"I see that you've been reviewing your new textbooks," Dumbledore observed needlessly when he'd greeted Harry and Sirius. " _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6… Quintessence: A Quest… Flesh-Eating Trees of the World_ … very good. I assume you did not fail to notice that there was no textbook assigned for Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"I thought perhaps you hadn't found anyone to teach yet, so there was no one to assign the text."

"A reasonable assumption," said Dumbledore. "My problem is slightly more complex, I'm afraid. You and I have discussed our mutual hope that if enough students were exposed to Professor Lupin without knowledge of his life story, they would change the way society as a whole views werewolves."

"Like with Hagrid and half-giants," Harry agreed.

"Many of the students who weren't convinced by Professor Lupin himself were convinced by your leadership, Harry."

Harry ducked his head in a way that made Sirius want to slap him and tell him to take credit. "I had loads of help. Cedric was Head Boy so people listened to him, and when Hermione wants to organize something-"

"Yes, yes," Dumbledore acknowledged. "If you read tomorrow's Daily Prophet very carefully, you may notice that a certain law has been repealed. It was not nearly as popular as Minister Fudge had hoped, and Cornelius does care deeply about what is and is not popular."

"I'd noticed," said Harry dryly.

Dumbledore laughed. Sirius didn't. His chest was beginning to tighten unpleasantly as Dumbledore spun out his revelation. The jealousy welling up in him was ugly. "You're going to ask Remus to teach again?"

"I'm going to ask Harry to ask him," Dumbledore corrected. "He did such a fine job recruiting Professor Slughorn last year."

"I don't think Lupin will need much convincing." Harry fairly skipped to the fireplace and reached for the Floo Powder.

* * *

Harry wasn't wrong. Remus made a few protestations which Tonks and Harry promptly shouted down. There would be new rules, of course. Remus wouldn't be permitted to spend his nights in the castle. "That's just as well for a man with a new wife," said Dumbledore. Tonks and Harry both grinned.

"You can have this cottage," said Sirius around the sawdust in his mouth. "Harry will be in his dormitory, and I'll be… gone."

" _Gone_ ?" The chorus might have been amusing at another time.

He reached for the only excuse he had- the invitation from the dueling club. He casually summoned the advertisement and passed it to Remus and Tonks. "Harry suggested that I go."

"I didn't suggest it," Harry objected. "I said you could go if you wanted."

"And you want to?" prompted Remus.

No, he didn't, not especially. But he didn't want to stay here, sinking into his own pool of envy. He was jealous of Remus, who within two months had regained both his wife and his career.

He wanted to do _something_ and be _somewhere_ .

He didn't know how to do that in a world without Voldemort to give him a purpose.

He'd protected Harry. He'd seen Remus and Tonks married. He'd buried Regulus and put the Black family's legacy to rest.

"Yes," Sirius lied. "I've never been to Japan. Or Las Vegas, or half of these places."

He didn't think any of them believed him, but none of them challenged him aloud.

**_To be continued._ **

* * *


	94. Sirius, Traveling

Sirius signed a contract that would bind him to the dueling circuit until December and left for Japan as soon as Harry boarded the Hogwarts Express. It was better that way. There would only be one goodbye.

For two weeks, he dueled five times a night, every night. He had no international ranking, but he had a famous name and a famous story. Strangers wanted to watch him. Strangers wanted to fight him. Strangers wanted to buy sake for him. He didn't object to any of it. It was nice to feel like someone else, a person who hadn't buried his best friend and his brother or spent most of his life in prison. It was nice to feel like himself, a person who was doing something just because he wanted to and not because he had to fight a war or protect his orphaned godson.

* * *

The next stop on the dueling circuit was in Portugal. It was here that his owl post caught up with him. He frantically tore open Harry's letter.

_Dear Sirius,_

_Things are the same as usual at Hogwarts. You were right about Slughorn giving away Felix Felicis on the first day of Potions. Hermione won it but she doesn't think it's right to use it so that was kind of a waste. Quidditch tryouts weren't like I thought they would be. A whole group of girls who barely knew how to fly turned up and giggled the whole time. Apparently I'm popular. It's even weirder than it was last year when everyone was trying to get invited to my next birthday party that I didn't have. Luckily Ginny was there to help._

_Hope you're having fun in Japan._

_-Harry_

It was too short. It left him simultaneously pleased that Harry seemed to be content and sad that his knowledge of Harry was now limited and curated. He supposed that this was how most parents (and godparents) felt when their children waited two weeks before sending a one-line owl home with news of their Sorting.

The letter from Remus was longer and Sirius turned it over in his hands before opening it.

_Dear Mr. Padfoot,_

_I expect that you won't see this until you reach Portugal, so I hope that you've had a wonderful time in Japan and will tell me all about it very soon._

_The beginning of the term has been more successful than I could have imagined. My third years applauded when I came into the classroom for their first lesson, late and dragging a case of boggart. Namrata and Margarita-I don't have favorites, but if I did, etc.- were as spectacular as I always knew that they would be._

_A few older students chose not to continue with Defense as an elective upon learning that I would be the professor; a few others asked to join the class. Several younger students, presumably at the direction of their parents, have refused to attend their required pre-OWL Defense classes. They are given one hour of detention each time they skip class, and during that hour they are required to study the material they missed. Their detentions are overseen by older students who have an interest in either teaching or Defense. That includes Harry, who is a wonderful tutor but leaves the students with no doubt in their minds that he does not approve of their decision. Harry's usual partner in these detention-classes is Stephanie Wheeler, the Head Girl. Having the open support of a Slytherin Head Girl and the Boy Who Lived has been integral to the success of my return to teaching, and I can't thank them enough._

_Harry and Stephanie have become quite the pair lately. I see them together far more often than their teaching duties would warrant. If he's not with Ron and Hermione or playing Quidditch, the best place to look for him is wherever Stephanie happens to be._

_In a testament to Hogwarts being educational to all, I recently learned that Harry is under the impression that I traveled with you to a certain cave to search for your brother's body. You are too old for me to scold you as if you were a first year waving your wand about haphazardly. But I think we both know that if you feel the need to mislead Harry about something, you should not have been doing that something._

_I would have helped, Sirius. I told you last Christmas that I would help._

_What's done is done, but next time please consider me as an alternative to a suicide mission._

_Regards,_

_Mr. Moony_

Sirius glared at the letter before kicking it under his bed. Remus had a way of purporting not to be scolding while doing something worse than scolding. He always had.

Harry's short letter had been far superior after all. Sirius reread it three times. Even reading between the lines, he could find no reference to Stephanie Wheeler. That wouldn't do.

_Dear Harry,_

_Thank you for your letter. I am glad that classes and Quidditch are going well. You mentioned Hermione in your letter, but you didn't mention any new friends. New friends whose initials may or may not be SW?_

_-Sirius_

He received another owl within the day.

_Dear Sirius,_

_Classes are still good. I'm so glad that I don't have to take Divination or History of Magic this year, and even though the classes I'm still taking are more difficult they're much more interesting. We started snargaluffs in Herbology today._

_Quidditch is good too. Our new Beaters aren't nearly as experienced as Fred and George, so it's lucky that our Chasers are all excellent at staying out of the way of Bludgers without much help. A girl named Demelza Robins is going to be the third Chaser in addition to Katie and Ginny. Demelza wasn't even on our reserve team last year; I don't know where she came from but I'm glad she's here._

_-Harry_

_P.S. I asked Stephanie Wheeler to come to Hogsmeade with me next weekend and she said yes. Cho told me last year that Stephanie would say yes if I asked her out, but I didn't really think about asking her until I saw the way she worked with the students who got detention for refusing to come to Professor Lupin's class. They all expect her to congratulate them because she's a Slytherin and she just doesn't. She always knows which ones would really be in trouble with their parents if they went to class and which ones are just being arseholes. The arseholes tend to reconsider their decisions when she makes them write extra lines. I've suggested that we have them write "I will not be a bigot" but she doesn't think that would work as well as making them do their regular work, only more boring than it would be with Lupin. I really like Stephanie a lot. I wonder what it would have been like if Cho had suggested that I go with Stephanie to the Yule Ball two years ago instead of Marietta._

Sirius' fist tightened around the letter of its own volition.

He was used to periodic waves of jealousy when he compared himself to Remus. The feeling always passed, and Sirius always ended up doing the right thing. He hadn't tried to sabotage Moony's relationship with Tonks. He had been the best man at their wedding and all but appointed himself the godfather of their first child. He had offered them his cottage as their new marital home- and it was true that he sometimes hated that cottage, but still, it had been a nice gesture by him and it definitely absolved him of his terrible, jealous thoughts.

He'd never before felt jealous of Harry.

He'd never expected to read a letter from Harry and think: _the next time James' son has sex will be sooner than the next time I have sex._

He did not, of course, share this thought with Harry. He wasn't entirely ridiculous.

* * *

Some of the witches and wizards he'd dueled with in Japan had traveled to Portugal; others had arrived to join the tour. There were also local champions who came to represent their communities against the traveling duelists.

That night, he found himself sharing a drink and a conversation with one of the local champions. For most of the night, they did more drinking than conversing. Neves was not confident in her English; Sirius spoke no Portuguese.

Then Neves ran her fingers through Sirius' hair. His chest tightened. Before Azkaban, women had always tried to touch his hair, but in recent years his notoriety and reclusiveness seemed to have made them reconsider. Perhaps Neves wasn't in a position to know that he was notorious and reclusive.

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Neves was looking at him. "Do you believe," she asked, "that a duel is always a competition?"

"Yes." Sirius fumbled frantically through his brain for a more articulate answer. He didn't find one.

Neves didn't seem to mind his curt answer. "I don't," she said. "Sometimes a duel is a… partnership. A dance. An exploration."

He found himself nodding in response as if she'd said a very wise thing.

(It was entirely possible that she had said a very wise thing and he'd just drunk too much to know one way or another. He'd never had Beirão before. It tasted like rosemary and mint and cinnamon and he'd lost track of how many he'd had.)

"An exploration," he echoed numbly, but it was clear now that they didn't need to talk. He led her upstairs to his room and locked the door.

She was magically skilled; a deceptively powerful witch. He knew that well enough- he'd dueled her, after all. Still, he couldn't help but think that she was ridiculous not to find him dangerous.

He was the notorious Sirius Black, Azkaban escapee, man who laughed as he stood in the middle of a street littered with dead bodies. No one ought to accompany him to his room and stand by nonchalantly as he locked the door.

He spun around, expecting to see the gray stone walls of Azkaban. Instead, he saw a soft bed covered with white and turquoise sheets. It could have been any hotel room in any country in the world.

He caught Neves around her waist and tossed her onto the bed.

She had the nerve to laugh, and to gesture that he ought to join her.

* * *

It was fast and awkward and he felt much better when it was over.

Not that he hadn't enjoyed the _during_ \- he had- but there was a unique satisfaction to knowing that everything had come to the expected conclusion and no one had died.

He wasn't being overly dramatic when he mentally celebrated the lack of death that had come along with sex. He could never have done this, would never have done this, while Voldemort lived. He'd thought to himself that Neves ought to have been afraid of him, but really, he'd been afraid of her.

He hadn't been specifically afraid of Neves Fonseca: Portuguese Dueling Champion and Connoisseur of Beirão.

He'd been afraid of being alone and vulnerable with anyone he did not know. In his youth, all unknowns had been assumed to have been Death Eaters in disguise. If he'd shagged every woman who'd admired his hair, he wouldn't have lived long enough to come up with that terrible idea about Peter being the Secret-Keeper.

But now was not the time to think about Peter. He admired Neves' naked body instead.

* * *

Sirius and Neves slept for several hours. When they awoke, the earliest hints of sun were slipping into the room from behind the turquoise curtains.

The night before had made Sirius remember something long forgotten and he was eager to touch Neves- soft and warm and happy to help him release fifteen years of frustration.

He was sorry to leave for Las Vegas at the end of September.

Neves said that she was sorry, too, and that Sirius could visit her the next time he came to Portugal if he wanted.

* * *

The Las Vegas tournaments were scheduled to last for a month, culminating in a day-long Halloween celebration. Sirius squelched a private flash of delight when he realized that he would be too busy to think about anything but dueling on Halloween.

In Las Vegas, everything was heat and color and light. At least half of the people he met seemed eager to fall into the next available bed with the next available partner. He took one or two of them up on their offers.

Far more than in Japan and Portugal, the people watching the duels wanted to see a show rather than a fight. Neves had been on to something when she'd spoken of duels as a partnership or a dance.

Sirius supposed that somewhere nearby, there were ordinary people with ordinary concerns living ordinary lives. But in the corner of the city where the arena was located, Sirius saw nothing but glitter and plastic and insincerity. He didn't mind. He drank it in. He'd needed a break from reality anyway.

Then Halloween came, as it inevitably did.

James had never been to Las Vegas. At home, everything Sirius looked at or touched came with a memory of James. He and James had visited every shop and restaurant in Hogsmeade together. The same held true in Diagon Alley. It ought to have been different in Las Vegas, even on Halloween.

But James was everywhere.

James was in Sirius' ear making clever comments about the strange costumes worn by wizards and Muggles alike.

James was crowing that Lily was far more beautiful than any of the half-naked women who eyed Sirius hopefully from around every corner.

James was wondering whether they shouldn't pay a visit to the Muggles' so-called Magic Show and see whether the International Statute of Secrecy was being violated.

James was suggesting that they get out of the city and see Death Valley National Park. _Get it, Padfoot? Because I'm dead!_

James was announcing that Sirius should try to do his best in the dueling arena that night, but he shouldn't feel too bad if he lost, after all, he wasn't half the duelist that James was…

 _I know you would have loved it, Prongs_ , Sirius thought.

James didn't answer. He didn't have to answer, and besides, he couldn't. He was dead.

* * *

Sirius dropped his guard in his first duel of the night and was hit in the head by a stunning spell.

* * *

He woke up in a Healer's office twelve hours later.

The Healer, who introduced himself as Charles Green, was relieved but not surprised. "The man who hit you was so upset I thought I'd have to give him a calming draught," said Healer Green pleasantly as he waved his wand above Sirius' chest. "He wanted me to assure you that he would never have put so much power behind the spell if he'd thought that there was a chance that it would hit you full force."

Sirius waved his hand dismissively. He knew that that was probably true, and even if wasn't, it didn't matter. The accident had been Sirius' own fault, not his dueling partner's.

_Sometimes a duel is a… partnership. A dance. An exploration._

"The rest of the duelists left for France two hours ago," Healer Green continued. "You can follow them tomorrow as long as you don't feel any pain in your head. If you do feel pain, come and see me right away."

Sirius agreed. "Did you use a standard healing potion on me, or a swelling antidote? Or both?"

"Standard healing potion and an anti-swelling charm. Extra dittany and murtlap applied to the bruise on your head, but there was no sign of any permanent damage to your brain."

Sirius couldn't help but laugh. His brain was no more damaged than it had been before.

"Everyone laughs when they hear that," said Healer Green.

Sirius didn't doubt it, but he still suspected that he had better cause to laugh than most. But there was no need to discuss that with Healer Green.

He looked for his wand and found that it had been stowed on a table beside his bed. "What do you need?" asked Healer Green.

"A mirror."

Healer Green conjured one from thin air and placed it in Sirius' hand. "The bruises are hardly noticeable. I did a fine job, if I do say so myself."

"Dittany and murtlap together? I was always taught to use one or the other, but not both."

"That used to be the common wisdom." Healer Green waved his wand and the mirror vanished again. "Do you have a background in healing magic?"

An odd numbness slipped through Sirius' body, and he was sure that it had nothing to do with the recent blow to his head. "Not formally. Nothing beyond NEWT-level." He remembered too late that Americans didn't usually understand about NEWTs. "It was just an… interest."

"A safer interest than dueling."

Sirius shrugged. "Any instructions other than not leaving for France until tomorrow?"

"No dueling until you get to France. That extends to punching, slamming your head into the wall, jumping out of a Muggle airplane-"

"Muggles do that?" asked Sirius keenly. He'd never heard of such a thing, and it sounded oddly intriguing.

"Why don't you take a walk and then return to your hotel room to rest?"

"Can I take the walk in Death Valley?"

Healer Green fixed him with a hard look. "If all you do is walk. No renting a motorcycle and…"

Sirius didn't hear the rest of what Healer Green said.

* * *

He bought a motorcycle and followed the directions to Highway 190.

He didn't think that Highway 190 was a very clever name, but no one had asked him.

The desert around him seemed empty of life. _Death Valley_ wasn't a very clever name, either, now that he thought of it.

It was more warning than name.

He wondered how many Muggles died here each year, victims of heat and cold and lack of water. He thought that the man who had sold him the motorcycle had tried to tell him, but he hadn't been listening.

The names swam through his ears now. _Dante's View, Zabriskie Point, Badwater Basin, Artist's Drive, Devil's Hole, Ubehebe Crater, Racetrack, Mesquite Dunes, Salt Creek, Devil's Golf Course, Harmony Borax, 20 Mule Team Canyon, Darwin Falls, Father Crowley Vista, Emigrant, Wildrose, Telescope Peak…_

It didn't matter what the places were called. It mattered that the sky was blue and the sand was golden and the air was hot and the motorcycle roared.

He let the motorcycle purr to a stop. Suddenly all was silent.

He'd hated the silence of Azkaban, not that Azkaban had ever been properly silent thanks to the waves lapping at the edge of the fortress far below the prisoners.

The silence of the desert was better.

He couldn't hear James in the desert.

 _You can hear me anywhere,_ James whispered in his mind.

"Especially at Halloween."

_Halloween is over. It's nearly your birthday._

"I told Remus I was changing that two years ago." Two years ago on Halloween, he'd hidden in the corner of the graveyard and watched the revelers pay tribute to a man and woman they'd never known. One year ago on Halloween, he'd hidden in his cottage in Hogsmeade while Tonks and Harry quietly played chess beside him. This year on Halloween, he'd avoided it all by getting himself knocked unconscious.

He wasn't certain whether that was good or bad.

He _was_ certain that he was meant to be in France tomorrow, and that news from Remus and Harry would be waiting for him there.

He rode the motorcycle back to Las Vegas and gifted the keys to the first Muggle who admired it.

Sirius preferred flying motorcycles, anyway.

* * *

Letters from Harry and Remus awaited him in France, as he'd known they would. For a moment, the letters rested heavily in his hand. Sirius hoped that they would be full of happy stories about first girlfriends and wedded bliss and the incomparable magic of Hogwarts. He opened Harry's letter first.

_Dear Sirius,_

_People are horrible and selfish and stupid and sometimes I hate all of them and wish they would walk into the Forbidden Forest to be eaten by acromantulas._

_I know Remus and Tonks will have told you all about this but I'll tell you too in case they've left anything out._

_Everyone knows that Remus is a werewolf and that he's not allowed to stay in Hogwarts at night, which is stupid because most of the time at night he's just another professor, really not just another professor, a professor who's actually smart and strong and wants to teach us which is more than we can say for some professors I could name._

_Anyway, since he's not at school at night obviously he's not transforming on school grounds either. People in Hogsmeade started getting upset, saying he's transforming there and was going to bite everyone. That's also really stupid because first of all he takes wolfsbane potion and it really works. But he told everyone that he wouldn't be in Hogsmeade on the night of a full moon. He even asked Ron and Hermione and me to tell people if they asked, which they did._

_So on the full moon he wasn't in the cottage in Hogsmeade. Nor was Tonks; she was with him in the place where they were that I'm not supposed to write down._

_But the stupid people in Hogsmeade decided to burn the cottage down anyway._

_They didn't ruin everything, and I took your things that you don't have with you back to my dormitory until the cottage is rebuilt. Tonks says they can do it by the end of this month and we'll definitely have it back for Christmas._

_Because it was officially an attack on the residence of an Auror, they caught the people who did it pretty quickly and arrested them. Tonks let me go with her when she interrogated them. I asked them why they burned down my house and why they were so stupid. They didn't have very good answers. I guess they didn't have to since they don't have to go to Azkaban because they were so afraid of Remus or whatever._

_I hate them, but I'm glad you weren't there to get hurt._

_-Harry_

Sirius didn't want to read Remus' letter. He knew it would be full of guilt and self-recrimination and all the boring things that were Remus at his worst.

He read it anyway. Things had to be handled.

_Dear Sirius,_

_You may already know what happened. Your generosity in sharing your home in Hogsmeade with me has been repaid with its destruction. A group of Hogsmeade residents who were concerned that a werwolf has been living in their midst attempted to burn down the cottage last night._

_I am more sorry than I can tell you that I brought this down on you. Being my friend has always been dangerous, but even more so now that I am publicly known to be a werewolf. I should have thought more about that._

_I will do everything in my power to repay you and I will never make this kind of mistake again. I have, of course, moved back to a place I won't mention to prevent any future acts of retribution._

_-Remus_

Sirius growled at the letter. Remus had obviously written it soon after the full moon; otherwise, it would have been longer and even more annoying.

He shouted for an owl and put quill to parchment.

_Dear Mr. Moony,_

_Do shut up. My concern is about you and Tonks and Harry, not the fucking cottage, which I didn't like all that much anyway._

_Regards,_

_Mr. Padfoot_

_P. S. You had better be there when I get there._

Then he summoned his mirror. He didn't care whether Harry was in class or at Quidditch practice or trying to get Stephanie out of her robes. He needed to see Harry, and he needed to see him now.

"Harry Potter!"

It was Ron's red hair that blinked into view. "Hi Sirius! Give Harry a second, he's-"

But whatever Harry had been doing was summarily dropped as he snatched the mirror from Ron's hand. "Sirius! Where have you been?"

"Las Vegas."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Tonks and I tried to use the telephone to talk to you, and we got through to the tournament, but they said that they'd never heard of you."

"I don't know." Perhaps he would look into that later. "Never mind me. Were you anywhere near that house when the fire started?"

"No. It was the middle of the night. I was in the dormitory."

"For once," said Sirius, knowing it really wasn't fair, since Harry hadn't put himself in danger by sneaking out without permission for what seemed like ages. Harry, accordingly, didn't dignify Sirius' comment with a response. "Are Remus and Tonks all right?"

"They weren't there, either. It was a full moon. That's how the arsonists justified it. They said they thought they were in danger from an unrestrained werewolf and were protecting themselves, and the Wizengamot believed it." Harry scowled. "Dumbledore thinks this is 'a long process of gradually helping everyone understand that what is different is not necessarily to be feared.'"

"What does Remus think?"

"At first he thought he should quit teaching and move back to Yorkshire." The triumphant snarl on Harry's face suggested that he had personally disabused Remus of the wisdom of that notion.

"You changed his mind?"

"I think Tonks did, mostly." His face hardened further. "I helped."

"And how are you doing?"

Harry shrugged. "Fine. I told you, I wasn't there when-"

"Someone burned down your home."

"Tonks says we can fix it. Tonks says she's looking forward to someone trying again." He smiled suddenly. "From the way they looked when she was talking to them, I don't think they'll try again. But we can use more wards and spells and protections than we did before, can't we? We can even make someone our Secret-Keeper if we have to."

Sirius' stomach lurched at the suggestion.

As much as it was a relief to find Harry focused almost entirely on the practical aspects of the matter, Sirius knew that it was time to return to Hogsmeade.

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Didn't you sign a contract to duel until next month?"

"There's a finite number of galleons that will make that contract go away." He didn't like how much he sounded like his father. He would worry about that later.

"We're all right, Sirius."

"Would you tell me if you weren't?"

"Yes. We could have agreed not to tell you about the house and rebuilt it while you were gone."

"I'd have found out eventually."

"Maybe."

He didn't like that _maybe_ .

"Stay until December," Harry wheedled. "Let Lupin and Tonks and me put the house back together before you see it again. Prove that you trust us and you don't blame Lupin for what happened."

There was some wisdom in that. "I'll consider it," he told Harry.

Then he channeled all of his anger and frustration into his first duel on French soil.

* * *

That evening, Sirius found himself internationally ranked as a duelist for the first time in his life. He and the opponents who had seen him hospitalized after one spell on Halloween laughed together at the irony.

* * *

A week later, Sirius glanced into the crowd after winning the night's "championship" and noticed a slender woman with dark hair and blue eyes.

It was Félicité Palomer.

When he climbed into the stands to greet her, she smiled and invited him to dinner, promising that he would thoroughly enjoy Les Bistro'Zof, which her students had recommended to her.

They didn't make it to Les Bistro'Zof. They made it to the bedroom in Félicité's flat. The pillowcases smelled of lavender, and that somehow made touching her and kissing her intensely personal.

"You have enjoyed traveling these past few months?" she asked when they were naked and sweating and satisfied.

"I hadn't been to Japan or that part of America before," Sirius said politely. "France and Portugal, not for many years."

"But have you enjoyed it?" she pressed.

He remembered drinking Beirão with Neves and riding the motorcycle into Death Valley. "Yes," he decided. "I've enjoyed it."

"Do you plan to keep doing it?"

If Félicité had wanted to make polite small talk, he wished that she would have done it before they'd gone to her flat. This conversation wouldn't have been half so unnerving if they had had it at Les Bistro'Zof while fully clothed. "No," he told her. "I don't. I want to be closer to my family. I don't want to be in Las Vegas when someone tries to burn down the house where my cousins and my godson might have been."

Félicité's eyes widened. "I hope that was a hypothetical example."

"Unfortunately not." He explained what had happened, and she expressed what he thought was a reasonable amount of outrage. (One thing Remus didn't understand about the value of having a werewolf friend: it was a _marvelous_ way to evaluate the character of a person one didn't know very well.)

"You haven't gone back?"

"Harry asked me to wait until Christmas. Well, not asked, exactly, but suggested it. I don't know whether he's trying to protect Remus or he's trying to protect me or whether he just doesn't want to see me."

"That would never happen," said Félicité with a soft smile.

"I thought everything would be easier," Sirius mused aloud, and not for the first time. "I thought that once I brought Harry home as my legally adopted son, and once we'd… resolved some things from the war against Voldemort, everything would be right in the world. I would have everything I wanted, I would _know_ what I wanted, what I had would be enough. Something other than wasted potential."

"You believe that you've wasted your potential?" Her voice was gentle. He suspected that she regularly had this sort of conversation with her students.

He didn't know. He didn't answer. "Remus always thought that I should have been a Healer. I thought that that was just Remus being Remus until I wound up in a magical hospital in Las Vegas and the Healer wanted to know why I cared about the way dittany interacts with murtlap. My parents used to think I was musical. Even Dumbledore commented on my singing more than once. I refused to take proper lessons after I turned eleven because I was…"

"Rebellious?" asked Félicité wryly.

"Something like that."

"Do you want to be a musician? You do look a bit like Stubby Boardman from the Hobgoblins. And as he's retired…"

Sirius laughed. "No."

"Do you want to be a Healer?"

"No. I'd be dreadful."

"I disagree, but you didn't ask my opinion. How else have you wasted your potential?"

"I've inherited a great deal of gold and I've yet to do anything with it other than make my life and my family's life easier."

"That's a perfectly valid use for gold."

He shook his head. "I don't want to discuss this further."

"What do you want to do?"

He kissed her.

It was mainly to end the conversation, and he thought she knew it, but she didn't seem to mind.

_**To be continued.** _


	95. The Christmas Tree

Remus loved Hogwarts at Christmas. He always had. He loved the food and the decorations and the Frog Choir's annual concert. He loved the frenetic excitement of the students, especially the youngest students who were eager to return home, bursting with pride, to tell their parents that they had successfully navigated their first term.

It was easy to remember how eager he had been to return home for the holidays as a student- and how eager he had been to stay with his friends at school, depending on the year.

Now that he was one of the few members of the staff who did not live in the castle, he was slightly, sadly disconnected from the excited joy of it all as he strolled through the corridors. Hogwarts was home to everyone but him. He merely visited five or six days per week.

The sun set before 4:00 in Scotland in late December, and Remus was perpetually in danger of violating the agreement that he would not be on school grounds "at night." His class schedule had been arranged to make certain that all of his classes took place during the scant few daylight hours, leaving him with little opportunity to invite students to his office for extra help as needed. All but the most diligent students were morally opposed to deliberately visiting a professor's office on weekends.

Instead, students had gotten into the habit of walking with him to the edge of the school grounds as daylight faded. Today, Remus' escort was Eddie Carmichael, a Ravenclaw seventh year who was eager to discuss the process of recognizing cursed objects. Eddie was convinced that the practical portion of the NEWT this year would require a demonstration of the student's skill at cursed object identification, and Remus suspected that Eddie was correct.

Eddie waved goodbye as they reached the path to Hogsmeade and Remus continued on alone. With each step, the world around him grew colder and darker, but the lights of the village were warm and welcoming. The darkness could never really drive out the light.

The sound of laughter- both Dora's and Harry's- reached him long before he arrived at the cottage.

All requests for alterations and repairs related to the early autumn fire had been approved before the ink had dried on the parchment. Dora, of course, had done the requesting. Ministry officials and building specialists were even more eager to help Aurors than they were to make werewolves' lives difficult. For a few weeks, Remus and Dora had bounced between his mostly-empty house in Yorkshire and her mostly-empty flat in London. Dora had grimly rolled her eyes and said that she was glad that the lease would not expire until January, because living with her parents was not her idea of the best way to start a marriage.

He'd smiled when she'd said it; it was, after all, the way they'd spent the entirety of their marriage the first time they'd tried it. Just because they'd spent all of their combined savings on the repairs to the cottage, _that didn't mean they'd soon be starving and homeless, that didn't mean that he'd ruined Dora's life…_

He put the thoughts out of his mind. If he let his thoughts linger too long on the fact that _someone might have burned down Sirius' cottage with Dora inside because Dora and Sirius had had the nerve to love Remus…_

He'd tried leaving Dora for her own protection once. It hadn't worked.

Harry's excited shout nearly broke his trance, but he wasn't quite ready to go inside, not yet. Instead, he mulled over whether Harry was skiving off class. Most likely he was not; sixth years, even those with heavy course loads, tended to have a reasonable number of free afternoons. Nonetheless, Harry was not meant to be out of the castle without permission and Remus did prefer to retain some credibility as a professor. He couldn't be seen near the school after dark; he couldn't be known to harbor students who violated rules meant to keep them safe.

He watched Dora and Harry through the front window for a moment. It was no surprise that the two of them were fussing with the Christmas tree.

Each day, Dora returned home from work with at least one new ornament. Most recently, she had added a miniature plate of bacon and eggs; a small Muggle van with its own tiny Christmas tree on top; and a not-so-giant squid. Remus' own purchases had run to gingerbread houses and snowmen and pinecones. The day before, he had bought a plain brown ball just to tease Dora. He insisted that it was his favorite.

(His real favorite was the sun Dora had chosen for him.)

As soon as Remus opened the door, Dora plucked the brown ball from the tree and waved it in his face.

"Harry and I were just saying that this is the most boring ornament we've ever seen in our entire lives," she said. She kissed his cheek and flounced back to the tree.

"Surely it's not the most boring ornament you've ever seen." He tossed his cloak on the nearest chair and settled himself in front of the fire, enjoying its warmth. "You wouldn't remember the most boring ornament you've ever seen. You'd not have noticed in the first place."

"It's _brown_ , Remus." She tried to toss the ball from one hand to the other, dropped it, and nearly careened into the tree.

The ball rolled to a stop on the other side of the room, where Harry scooped it up. "It didn't break," he assured them.

"It couldn't," said Dora. "It needs to stay alive to torment my more interesting ornaments."

"It flatters your more interesting ornaments by letting them be the ones to draw your eye," Remus argued. He gestured aimlessly at Harry. "Put that back where it was, and explain to me why you aren't at school."

Harry obediently replaced the ornament. "I'm not at school because I'd rather be here."

"If that's the case, you could have asked for permission and I could have granted it."

"That would be like inviting myself to dinner, and my Aunt Petunia taught me that that was rude," said Harry with such a perfectly straight face that Remus almost believed him. "I had to come over here first, so Tonks could invite me to stay."

"This is your home," Tonks injected. "Of course you could invite yourself to stay."

"It is, Harry," Remus agreed. "But I'd like you to tell me or Professor McGonagall before you come over." Harry pulled a face. "Why is that a problem?"

Harry sighed. "It's not."

Part of Remus wanted to press, to demand to know why Harry had left school in the first place, but he reminded himself that Harry was more than old enough to have a few secrets. If Harry had been worried about the house being vandalized a second time, or had felt lonely without Sirius, or had had a row with Stephanie, or had simply been bored, that was Harry's business.

"Thank you," was all Remus said out loud. He rose reluctantly from the warm chair beside the fire and inspected the tree more closely. "Where did all of the dog ornaments go?" They had all, without discussing it amongst themselves, made a habit of purchasing every dog-shaped Christmas ornament they could find. The ornaments' sudden absence was glaring.

Dora and Harry burst into fresh peels of laughter.

Remus waited.

"Tonks found a garland of enchanted tennis balls!" Harry explained at last. "We couldn't make them fit."

"So I popped out and got another tree!" Dora finished, just as gleefully. "We've put it in Sirius' room, but we haven't decorated it yet. We were waiting for you, and for Marquelle night on Wizarding Wireless to start."

"I didn't know there was a Marquelle night on Wizarding Wireless."

Tonks shook her head sadly at Harry. "This is why Remus needs me," she said.

"I didn't know there was a Marquelle night on Wizarding Wireless, either," said Harry.

"Then I guess you need me, too. But right now, I need both of you to set up that tree without destroying Sirius' room." She pointed at the stairs, and Remus and Harry willingly obeyed her.

* * *

The three of them had, almost by accident, doubled the size of the cottage while repairing the damage from the fire. The second floor now consisted of two mirroring bedrooms, each with its own en suite along with space for an office and a miniature kitchen. Each bedroom was large enough to allow its owner to completely ignore the other occupants of the house… but not quite large enough to encourage as much.

The original plan had been for one bedroom to belong to Sirius and the other to Harry, while Remus and Tonks took over the attic. Harry, though, had claimed the attic for himself, arguing that Ron's room in the Burrow was on the top floor and their dormitory at school was at the top of Gryffindor tower, so by definition Harry should always be at the top.

Remus privately thought Harry's decision had more to do with the way the attic window opened perfectly to allow entrance and exit via broomstick.

Either way, the attic- fully furnished and decorated and not feeling particularly like an attic- was now Harry's personal domain.

Sirius had not been available to decorate his own room, although he had never precisely appeared to settle into the original version. They had chosen thick rugs and a comfortable armchair, operating on the assumption that any room needed these. Remus had been hesitant to hang up the photograph of the night sky which Harry informed him had been a present from Andromeda, but Dora had been insistent that if Sirius wasn't going to decorate properly, they would do it for him. And so a photograph of Sirius and James at school had come to hang on the far wall. And a swirling enchanted crossword puzzle now covered the space beside the shelves of books. And a magical painting of the Forbidden Forest, complete with wild creatures flitting in and out of view, was in the corner that Dora and Harry now claimed for their new Christmas tree.

Even with magic, took Harry and Remus far longer than Remus would have expected to get the tree to remain bolt upright. When they had achieved this goal to Dora's satisfaction, she turned on the Wizarding Wireless Network as loud as it would go, and the three of them covered the tree with tennis balls, sausages, collars and leashes, and models of what might have been every breed of dog in the world.

They deemed the tree properly decorated as the Weird Sisters' newest Christmas song- _Sugar in Your Cauldron_ \- ended with an explosion of ringing bells.

"If you've visited us at Marquelle- and if you haven't, you should- you know that for every magical song, we play a song from the Muggle world. So that was _Sugar in Your Cauldron_ , yet another hit for the Weird Sisters, and this is _All I Want for Christmas is You_ , by the Muggle songstress Mariah Carey."

Dora clapped and caught Remus' hands in her own. "You didn't dance with me to this song last year," she announced. "This song got me in trouble at work because Maria Gordon was almost too much of a sycophant to stand up to that Umbridge woman."

"Do you still have to see her at work?" asked Harry. He settled into Sirius' armchair and watched as Remus and Dora danced rather poorly.

_… I don't want a lot for Christmas_

_There is just one thing I need, and I_

_Don't care about the presents_

_Underneath the Christmas tree…_

Dora peeked happily over Remus' shoulder at Harry. "I do have to see her at work. It's great fun."

"How is it fun?" asked Harry.

"Well, Minister Fudge was so eager to get away from her after she overplayed her hand with Dumbledore that he demoted her. Then he waited until he thought no one was looking, and he demoted her again. Then he waited until he had an excuse, and he demoted her again. She's less than a secretary now. I could send her out to pick up my lunch if I wanted- not that I would trust her with food I was going to eat."

"Mad-Eye must be proud," said Remus.

"Oh, he is," said Dora. She tightened her grip on his shoulders.

"So," said Harry. "Hypothetically, if you thought that there were famous cursed objects hidden in a pile of dragon dung, you could make her sort through it in her bare hands?"

"The curse couldn't be terribly dangerous," said Dora. "Else we'd have to do it ourselves."

"What do you have her do?"

"Me, personally?" said Dora. "Nothing. I like it better when she's stuck alone in her little closet. I stand outside the door and talk about how her father used to wash the floors and knew that all kinds of work is valuable. She's ashamed of her dad, see. Nothing I can do will hurt her as much as her own snobbery."

Neither Remus nor Harry had anything to add to that, and music filled the room again.

_I just want you for my own_

_More than you could ever know_

_Make my wish come true_

_All I want for Christmas is you…_

The song ended, and the announcer excitedly informed listeners that up next was the Hobgoblins' classic, _Winter Wand._

Dora let go of Remus and he missed the feeling of her body close to his. How was it that he could see her every day, could touch her every day, and still felt bereft when she was five feet away from him?

She held out her hand to Harry now. "Dance with me."

Harry shook his head. "I don't dance."

"Neither do Remus and I, but we don't let that stop us."

"You danced with Tulip at our wedding," Remus pointed out. "Which we appreciated."

"I'm much less frightening than Tulip," added Dora, and eventually she cajoled Harry into dancing with her for just a moment. "You could bring Stephanie over next time, you know," she suggested. "Where is she tonight?"

"Class," Harry explained. "Not class, exactly, but she wants to be a magizoologist specializing in aquatic creatures. Hagrid hasn't taught at the NEWT-level very much, so she has private lessons with an expert some nights…"

The music shifted again. This time, the Muggle selection was _The Little Drummer Boy_ . Dora's face lit with delight. "This was my favorite when I was, oh, seven years old!" she exclaimed.

" _That's right_ ," Remus remembered quietly. As if an afternoon of watching Harry and Dora laugh together like old chums hadn't been enough to remind him that he'd married a woman closer to James' son's age than to his own age.

Dora tilted her head curiously. "I don't remember telling you that. Is this some of that… _other-worldly knowledge_ you have?"

Remus knew he looked dreadfully uncomfortable. "No," he said. "The slightly disturbing truth of it is that you taught me that song when you were seven years old."

"You came to visit with Sirius?" she demanded. "I didn't think we'd ever met when I was young. That's romantic."

"Or creepy," suggested Harry helpfully.

Remus glanced at Harry fondly. It felt good to know that Harry was comfortable enough with Remus to poke fun at him. It felt good to know that Remus was comfortable enough with his own marriage to allow someone to poke fun at it… _even if Dora could have died in that fire, punishment for marrying a man who was too old, too poor, too sick…_

Dora swatted Harry lightly across his head. Harry dodged and snickered.

"The truth is, Harry, that Dora taught you that song when you were a baby, as well. She taught us both indirectly."

"Are you going to tell us what happened, or are you going to make us guess?" Dora demanded.

"I'm getting there," said Remus. He was getting there. _There_ just happened to be a tricky place, sometimes. "Harry's parents were in hiding, for the most part, before he was born. Sirius practically lived with them, of course. He was Harry's godfather and had agreed to be his guardian should anything ever happen to James and Lily. Nonetheless, they invited Peter and me over for Christmas."

Harry was listening raptly, if sadly. Remus indulged in comparing the young man before him with his mental image of a five-month-old baby.

"Sirius always wanted Harry's full attention. He wanted to be the one holding Harry, feeding Harry, playing with Harry. We were all sitting in the front room," _the room where James would die within a year_ , "eating biscuits and admiring the Christmas tree. Sirius had Harry in his lap and was singing to him. This song."

_Come they told me_

_Pa rum pum pum-pum_

_A newborn king to see_

_Pa rum pum pum-pum_

"Sirius had Harry's hands in his and was helping him 'drum' along with the song. Harry was delighted, of course. He always loved Padfoot."

Harry smiled now, and Dora took Remus' hand.

"James and Peter and I had never heard the song before and we asked Sirius where he'd learned it. And Sirius told us that he'd learned it from his charming young cousin." Remus squeezed Dora's hand. "Lily, having been raised by Muggles, already knew it. She'd noticed that it had been formally banned amongst Voldemort's sympathizers, but she didn't know why. It took me the best part of the afternoon to work it out." He couldn't resist the urge to be Harry's professor. "Have you spotted the problem, Harry? Why didn't the blood purists care for the little drummer boy?"

"Er," said Harry, but his eyes were flashing the way they did when he was thinking. "Dumbledore loves all music so Voldemort wanted his followers to hate it? And Voldemort believed in killing babies, not giving them gifts."

"You're not very far off. Everyone wishes to make the child happy, but the rich men who bring expensive gifts aren't nearly as successful as the the poor boy- the boy who does not come from an old, established family- the boy who has nothing to offer but his song. The child smiles at the boy who comes from the lowest station. It was viewed as a metaphor for Muggle-borns having as much to offer as the oldest pureblood families."

"That's ridiculous," said Dora. "They were just looking for reasons to be offended."

"Possibly," agreed Remus. "But at the time we had to keep track of all of those things. Peter told Sirius to tell Andromeda to stop you singing it. Sirius snapped at Peter that it wasn't an integrationalist anthem, and that your Muggle grandparents made you more of a target than any song ever could. Sirius had a way of projecting a certain disdain for Peter."

"And Peter had his revenge," said Dora darkly. "I really hope Sirius likes what we've done with the cottage when he gets home."

* * *

"We should have burned this place down ages ago," was the first thing Sirius said when he walked in the door. "I actually like it now. I don't think I'll leave again."

"Good," said Dora, giving him a hard hug. "We've missed you."

Sirius didn't respond, but busied himself arranging piles of presents and laughing uproariously at his personal tree.

Remus did not find himself alone with Sirius until Christmas Eve morning. Dora was at work; Harry was at the Burrow with the Weasleys.

"I hope Molly doesn't refuse to let him leave," Sirius said darkly. "She tried that last Easter."

"But he still left with you." Remus had never heard all of the details of the incident; there had only been occasional mutterings from Sirius, and once an offhand comment from George Weasley.

"He had to face Voldemort before Voldemort rose to power again. Of course he came with me."

"And now you've legally adopted him and he's nearly of age."

"Don't remind me," said Sirius.

Remus smiled. "Not even if I have a suggestion to give Harry the perfect celebration?"

That had Sirius' attention, as Remus had known it would. "I'm listening."

"The last time Harry turned seventeen, Molly gave him Fabian's watch."

Sirius whistled. "Fabian's watch? I'm amazed that she even had it. It took five Death Eaters to take him down, and if he was wearing the watch…"

"It did have a dent in it. Harry was thrilled, of course. It meant more to him than-"

"You do not need to explain, Moony!"

And Remus knew he didn't. He changed the subject, quickly, to Sirius' travels. Sirius acknowledged that there had been liquor (obviously) and women (predictably) and a motorcycle ride in something called Death Valley (not a surprise) and a stay in the hospital (only the one?).

Harry returned early that evening bearing a stack of mince pies, which Molly had sent for all of them along with her love. Remus avoided catching Sirius' eye. It would have been counterproductive.

Fred and George had also sent along several sets of their Limited Edition Christmas Exploding Snap cards. The cards exploded into red and green flames, with scents ranging from "fresh snow" to "gingerbread" to "pine tree." All in all, the cards were an uncommonly respectable product by the twins' usual standards.

"They do breed pygmy puffs, too," said Harry when Remus remarked that he expected any product of Fred's and George's to be more violent than the original, not less. "They'll invent almost anything if they think it'll sell. Mrs. Weasley's not half as mad about their business anymore."

For the second time in as many minutes, Remus avoided catching Sirius' eye. "Let's have a game while we wait for Dora, shall we?" he asked.

Harry eagerly shuffled the cards.

They passed one of the most contented Christmas Eves in Remus' memory.

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: As was the case way back in chapter 65, All I Want for Christmas Is You was first recorded by Mariah Carey, who co-wrote and co-produced it with Walter Afanasieff.
> 
> The Little Drummer Boy (originally known as Carol of the Drum ) was written by Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941 and first recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers.
> 
> The backstory about the Marauders discussing the political implications of singing The Little Drummer Boy while playing with baby Harry was stolen from a long-since-deleted fanfiction. If I could remember the title or the author, I'd acknowledge them, but I don't so I can't.


	96. The Baby

The second term of Remus' first year as a professor who was known to be a werewolf was much like the first.

Three students quietly rejoined his classes; fourteen continued their boycott.

Jane Williamson, a fourth year Slytherin, made the easiest transition. She walked into the classroom arm-in-arm with Astoria Greengrass, sat down, and correctly answered the first question Remus put to the group.

Phyllida Parsons, a first year Slytherin, entered the room pale and trembling. Her hands shook so hard that she dropped her quill on no fewer than five occasions. Remus made an effort not to look at her. It was difficult to concentrate on teaching, though, when he contemplated what a disservice he was doing to the students whose families would not permit them to be in his presence- and to the students who were too frightened of him to learn properly.

Bertrand Cotterill, a third year Gryffindor, scowled silently at Remus from the back of the room. Bertrand had never before been afraid to volunteer his opinions, and Remus thought that he would begin to do so again if given time.

Bertrand's classmates, though, weren't inclined to give him time.

Margarita Jewell, who so far as Remus could tell had despised Bertrand at first sight anyway, loudly wondered if Bertrand had only declined to resume classes during the autumn term because he'd been afraid to face the boggart.

Margarita's best friend Namrata suggested that not even Bertrand could be so stupid as not to realize that he'd only needed to skip one day of class to avoid the boggart. Margarita retorted that the depths of Bertrand's ignorance were vast and untapped.

Remus took ten points from Gryffindor for Margarita's comments and five more for Namrata; then he asked them to remain after class.

They both glared mutinously. They had always been among his strongest supporters and he knew it. He would never forget the expression on Namrata's face when she'd handed him her pumpkin juice as he'd been escorted out of the school by Aurors the morning after the full moon.

"You cannot insult the intelligence of your classmates," he told them bluntly when they were alone. "I cannot give you detention because I cannot remain in the castle during the evenings to supervise detention. Therefore, my only recourse is to take points, and I will take exponentially more points each and every time you have a go at Bertrand. I do not especially enjoy taking points from my old House, so I would appreciate it if you would refrain in the future."

Betrayal was plain on their faces. "Yes, Sir," they chorused, and Margarita informed him that they would be late for Herbology if there was nothing more. As they fled, Namrata added that she certainly would not want to be late for Herbology, because unlike some people she had so much respect for her professors that she never missed class.

* * *

Margarita and Namrata weighed heavily on his mind as he left the school grounds that day. He had wanted to tell them more, had wanted to explain why it was so very important not to punish Bertrand while he was beginning to set aside the bigotry that had been instilled in him by his parents, had wanted to tell them how very fond he had always been of them, had even wanted to tell them how much they had always reminded him of Sirius and James…

It was only the reflexes honed during two wars that allowed him to raise a shield charm in time.

 _"Filthy beast!"_ a voice echoed from somewhere behind the tea shop. _"You've no business teaching our children!"_

Footsteps retreated. When the spell- probably just a stunning spell, but it might have been something much worse- hadn't met its mark, Remus' attacker had opted to retreat.

A family- mother, father, and three children too young for Hogwarts- hastily crossed the street to avoid Remus. Whether they were avoiding the possible altercation or whether they were avoiding the werewolf, Remus did not know.

He reminded himself to be grateful that it didn't happen more often.

He was also grateful to find the cottage empty. Dora was at work; Sirius was visiting Félicité in France. (Sirius insisted that his entanglement with Félicité was not serious from either end, but that Félicité "helped him think.)

* * *

The next time someone threw a spell at him in the middle of Hogsmeade, Dora was holding his hand. They were in almost the same place; apparently, the spot behind the tea shop made for an excellent path of retreat.

Dora added a foot to her height and what looked like a hundred pounds of muscle to her frame. Long-legged and broad-shouldered, she tore after Remus' assailant.

 _"Don't, Dora!"_ he shouted, but she either did not hear him or did not care.

He had no choice but to give chase himself. _If his assailant managed to hurt Dora instead…_

By the time he caught up with them, Dora had bound the young man with neatly conjured ropes and was holding him by his throat. "I suppose I could take you in," she was saying. "But that would mean a lot of paperwork, and as much as I'd enjoy watching you wet yourself in a holding cell, I'm not in the mood. But I know your face now, and I will not be so lenient next time. Understood?"

The man blinked, which Remus took to mean that he did understand.

Dora removed the ropes, took Remus by the arm, and marched him back home.

* * *

"I wish you hadn't done that," he said.

"Magical law enforcement is part of my job." She tugged casually at her robes, which had ripped when she'd morphed so quickly into a much larger persom. "I would have chased anyone I saw trying to hex someone who was just minding his own business in the middle of the street. I can't set that aside because the target is you. That spell could have hit anyone else in the street. Madam Rosmerta's new waitress. A ten-year-old trying to get a look at Hogwarts before he starts school. A Healer who just got off a twenty-hour shift at St. Mungo's and isn't paying attention."

It was a fair argument. "All right."

"Not that I want to set it aside because the target is you," she added. "You don't deserve to have someone trying to hex you while you walk down the street with your wife."

"I know that, Dora," he said wearily.

He wanted to remind her that she was free to end their marriage at any time if the burden of being the wife of a known werewolf became too much for her.

He wanted to explain that it was easier to tolerate the curses and hexes and private protests made by people who hated werewolves than it was to manage the fallout when someone took up on his behalf.

He wanted to tell her that he was both grateful and humiliated.

He didn't.

They'd had those conversations before.

"I know you don't like me to make a scene and I know you have your reasons for it," Dora said. "But this wasn't a brat making fun of your scars at a theme park. It was a grown man breaking the law, and I did let him off with a warning instead of bringing him in. We're permitted to use discretion when no one gets hurt, but I didn't have to let him go, you know."

"You did." She'd made a concession to him and he hadn't even noticed. How many times had she done that already? How many more times would he ask her to do it?

"I suppose I should tell you that I shan't hold back if someone does that when we're with our child," she told him.

Every fear he had ever had about having children came back in full force.

_Even if he doesn't inherit my curse, he will be ostracized. What parent would allow a child to play with the son of a known werewolf? He'll be in danger, always. Dora is quite right when she speculates that someone may attempt to curse me while Teddy is beside me. He may starve. If attitudes shift, and attitudes are always shifting, Dora and I may both become unemployable…_

The best thing he could ever have done for Teddy was die. Die building a better world, die leaving Teddy to be raised by Dora and her respectable mother…

* * *

The next full moon fell squarely in the middle of the week. Remus knew that even with Wolfsbane Potion and Sirius and Dora's joint ministrations, he would be unable to take his classes the next day. At the suggestion of the Headmaster, Stephanie Wheeler was permitted to miss her own Herbology class to teach the younger students.

"I'm so happy for the opportunity," she told Remus. "Anything to make me stand out when I'm trying to start my career this summer."

He didn't think that she would ever have any trouble finding employment and told her so.

She shook her head. "A specialist in magical creatures who went to a school where the magical creatures professor is barely literate and never passed his own OWLs, let alone his NEWTs? How can he prepare me for an exam if he doesn't even understand the textbook? That's why I wanted you to stay, Professor Lupin. We used to have unqualified Defense professors, too, and if we have someone qualified at least he can help fill in the cracks Hagrid leaves."

Remus suggested that Hagrid had a great deal to offer his students and reminded Stephanie to speak of her professors with respect.

Stephanie only just refrained from rolling her eyes, but by all reports she did a wonderful job in his stead.

* * *

Remus wasn't surprised when he heard through Hogwarts' always-powerful rumor mill that Harry and Stephanie had broken up because Stephanie had insulted Hagrid in Harry's presence.

Harry began dating Ginny almost immediately, which surprised no one who had watched them together on the Quidditch pitch.

* * *

It was after Harry began bringing Ginny round the cottage in Hogsmeade once a week that Sirius gritted his teeth and invited Molly and Arthur over for dinner.

Or rather, Sirius asked Remus to do the inviting on his behalf and Remus agreed.

"I was a bit surprised to hear from you," said Arthur when he had reviewed the most recent modifications Sirius had made to his motorcycle and admired the motorcycle cover which had been a gift from Harry. "Fred and George aren't at school, and Ron and Ginny seem to have been on their best behavior."

"Ron and Ginny are both performing brilliantly in my class," Remus confirmed. "I expect Ginny to have little trouble with her OWL, and of course I was very pleased with Ron's results last spring."

"So were we," Molly agreed eagerly. "Quidditch, Prefect, OWLs in the core subjects. Perhaps we'll have a third Head Boy in the family!"

"He would perform the job admirably," said Remus, although he knew that the staff's betting pool gave Ron only the fourth-best odds for the job. (The smart money was on Ernie MacMillan, and everyone was well aware of Dumbledore's particular fondness for Harry, whose own father had skipped over the prefect appointment on his way to becoming Head Boy.) "But I- well, I issued the invitation but it was Sirius' idea- we wanted to discuss Harry. It will be his seventeenth birthday in July."

"Are you going to have another party at Grimmauld Place, Sirius?" asked Arthur. "You'd have a hard time out-doing the indoor beach. My children still talk about it."

"Harry has informed me that he enjoyed having that sort of party once, but he doesn't want to do it again." Remus thought that Sirius was trying to deliver the words lightly; if so, Sirius was failing. His detached seriousness reminded Remus forcefully of the handful of times he'd seen Orion Black.

(That was an observation he would absolutely never share with Sirius, not on his death bed, not under threat of dismemberment.)

"Harry, I believe, would much prefer a family celebration. He treasures a family connection above all else."

"As he should," said Molly sharply.

Remus began to regret this. Harry was nearly an adult. There was no reason that Sirius and Molly needed to like each other.

Sirius carried on as if Molly hadn't spoken. "Because Harry thinks of your children as part of his family," _and it was so, so petty that Sirius ignored the fact that Harry also thought of Molly as part of his family_ , "I was wondering if you would be willing to allow me to host Harry's birthday party at your home."

Molly's eyes lit up. "As it is my home, and as I have treated Harry as one of my sons, I would prefer that we host the party jointly."

Sirius accepted enthusiastically.

By the time they'd finished eating, Sirius and Molly had planned every detail of Harry's party with three months to spare.

The evening ended with Molly suggesting through sobs that Harry, who had so little in the way of family heirlooms, might like her brother Fabian's watch.

* * *

"I still don't like her," said Sirius when Molly left.

"You don't have to like her, Padfoot," said Remus.

Sirius eyed Remus suspiciously. "You think I'll like her before this is all over."

"I genuinely do not care."

"I didn't need either of you to tell me that Harry wants to feel like he's part of a family more than he wants the most gem-encrusted watch I could buy him, you know."

Remus did know.

He knew perfectly well that that was what Sirius had wanted most, too.

And Remus, who unlike Harry and Sirius had been raised by adoring parents, wanted another taste of it.

* * *

The last full moon of the term fell, conveniently enough, just before the weekend. Remus spent the day after his transformation dozing in bed. Late in the afternoon, Dora crawled into bed beside him.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"How could I feel anything but wonderful when you're here?" he returned.

She sighed contentedly against him. "I was thinking about our honeymoon."

"Which bit?" He plastered an innocent expression on his face. "The flying carpet? The music? The ta'ameya?"

"All of those bits." She shifted so that they were somehow even closer together. "Other bits as well. All of those times when we were so very careful because we didn't want a honeymoon baby."

"I enjoyed that as well." He was too tired and sore for a proper encore performance at the moment, but he supposed he wouldn't object if Dora took the lead and he didn't have to do very much…

"We agreed not to try for a baby until spring because we wanted to have our best chance of getting Teddy back," she said needlessly.

"Yes."

"It's spring. Do you still want to start trying?"

He sat up abruptly, surprised at her question. "Do you?"

"I asked you first." She shook her head, making her hair fly out in all directions. Today it was the shade of turquoise Remus associated with Teddy. "I do. But you barely want to defend yourself when someone attacks you for being ill."

"It's rather more than an illness. I could hurt someone. That's why they're afraid."

"You wouldn't hurt someone when you've drunk the potion and have Sirius or me around to mind you. You certainly wouldn't hurt someone when you're in human form. But this is what I mean, Remus. I want to have a child with you. I have since you first told me about Teddy. You, on the other hand, want to make up excuses for the people who would hurt you and our son."

"That's not what I want to do at all."

"It makes sense," she said, ignoring him. "You told me that the first time you went to Egypt, your parents were trying to cure you. You've spent your whole life thinking that there was something wrong with you that needed to be fixed. I know Lyall and your mum were trying to help you, but… did I ever tell you that my parents were offered money to experiment on me?"

Revulsion struck him like a physical blow. "What?"

She shrugged. "Healers. Researchers. Metamorphmagi are incredibly rare, and there was always someone who wanted to know more about how my body works. Mum always told them that her daughter was not a subject for their experiments. I wish someone had said that about you."

He opened his mouth to defend his parents. They had bankrupted themselves and uprooted their lives over and over again in a futile attempt to cure him. What he said instead was, "There was a girl named Willow."

"Willow?" Dora flashed a grin. "You swore there was never anyone but me."

"We were children. I met her in Egypt. Her parents were searching for a cure as well."

"She was a werewolf?"

"No. Willow as infected with _Naegleria fowleri_ as a toddler. Muggles usually die soon after they inhale it. Willow was magical, so instead she suffered for seven years. She was nine when we met, and I was eleven. She was dying. But her parents tried everything. By the time I met her, she could only enjoy food if it was very sweet. Biscuits, cakes, tarts. Her mother forbade her to have any."

"Why?"

"Because she was convinced that Willow would recover and would be angry if her mother had allowed her to get fat."

"Her mother would rather have seen her dead than fat?"

"Not at all. Her mother was so desperate that she couldn't see reason and her mind latched onto an idea that was quite ridiculous to the rest of us. None of us could make her understand. Not the Healer. Not my parents, not her husband, not Willow herself. _Let Willow eat what she wants,_ we all said. _If she lives, she can lose the weight if it's so very important. If she dies, she will have had a measure of comfort._ But Willow's mother couldn't understand. Her grief was beyond reason. She felt that her daughter was her purpose, her very reason for living. I don't believe it's uncommon for parents to feel that way. I felt that way."

"Please tell me Willow didn't starve to death."

"She did not. But she died that spring. We returned to England and soon after Dumbledore came to invite me to Hogwarts." His throat tightened. "It was no surprise to me that Dumbledore had planned for a whomping willow to protect the other students from me. I felt that she was watching over me. That she wanted at least one of us to live a full life."

"Thank you for telling me about Willow," said Dora softly.

"When I was eleven, I thought her mother was ridiculous. I think I understand better now. I understand how the love for your child can be, not only all-encompassing, but illogical. I've thought of not bringing Teddy into this world because the risks are so great."

"But now you remember why you want to start trying for Teddy soon?" she prompted.

"Yes," he told her. "Yes, absolutely."

* * *

On the day of Harry's seventeenth birthday, Dora quietly, giddily told Remus that she was pregnant. The two of them celebrated privately in the middle of Harry's crowded, raucous party. In the end, Harry had invited a dozen guests in addition to the Weasley family. Ron and Ginny had apparently been granted veto power over the guest list and there had been a great row over Viktor Krum. Krum had turned out to be unable to come, settling the matter.

In their own corner of the Weasley garden, Remus and Dora toasted over and over to seeing Teddy again.

Everything felt so much as it should be that Remus ignored any niggling thought that this baby might not be, could not be, their Teddy.

**_To be continued._ **

* * *


	97. The Baby 2

For Remus, everything was beautiful.

It was beautiful when he returned to Hogwarts.

Ten students who had boycotted his class the previous year returned, leaving only four who continued to refuse to attend. Now that the number of protesting students was so small, Dumbledore decided that the time had come to end supervised detention with Harry. Instead, each time a student skipped Remus' class, he or she spent an evening mopping the corridors with Mr. Filch.

Filch's red-rimmed eyes lit up when Remus asked whether he was greatly inconvenienced by the extra time spent supervising detention on an almost daily basis. "No," he said. "It's about time the Headmaster gave these students some real discipline. Mopping the corridors is work, and work is what they ought to be doing if they aren't willing to attend class."

For perhaps the first time in his life, Remus reckoned that Filch had a fair point. He did make certain to gift Filch with a bar of Honeydukes' best chocolate and a cat toy for Mrs. Norris each month as a token of his appreciation for the extra duties that had fallen upon the caretaker.

Dora told Remus that during her school days, she had more than once sent Filch a wrapped present so as to distract him while she raided his office. Remus could hardly sit in judgment on Dora for playing such a trick- not considering the sort of things he and his friends had done when they had been students- but he did feel a rush of pity for Filch. Filch treated all of the students and most of the staff with real unpleasantness, but for a man to be so bitter and feel so deeply unloved… it was doubly sad when Remus, now, had so very much.

"I'm glad we don't have to have classes for the students who boycott anymore, but I'll miss teaching," said Harry when he arrived early to the first Defense class of his seventh year. He seated himself on Remus' desk the way Dora always had when she'd come to monitor the Imperius lessons. (It would be time for a new round of Imperius lessons next year, for the students who had been too young to take the course during the Triwizard Tournament. Remus wondered whether the Ministry would give him permission. Perhaps it would be better to allow an Auror to cast the curse while he coached from the sidelines.)

"There are still plenty of students who could use the occasional tutoring session even after they've attended class," Remus told Harry. "I can assign a few of them to you, but I should think you're rather busy being Quidditch captain and Head Boy."

Harry glanced nervously, awkwardly at the Head Boy badge pinned to his robes. "It should have been Ron," he said, not for the first time. "He's done the prefect work for two years. I shouldn't be allowed to come out of nowhere and jump over him and Ernie and everyone else."

"I never felt jumped over when your father was made Head Boy even though I was the Gryffindor prefect in our year. Never once. I thought James was the best man for the job."

"Well, you thought my dad was perfect," said Harry.

Remus ignored the tiny bit of disdain he thought he heard in Harry's voice. If Harry was accusing him of hero-worshipping his brilliant friends, well, there was some truth to that. If Harry was just nervous about his new position and Remus was imagining the disdain, that was something they could discuss. "I admired James greatly," Remus admitted. "I did not think that he was perfect. Is Ron upset that you were made Head Boy?"

Harry shook his head. "No. He says it's great that we can ride in the prefects' car together on the train, says he's glad he's taking orders from me because he'd never take them from Malfoy. Besides, he's dating Lavender, and she's all he thinks about most of the time."

"That sounds about right," said Remus, who remembered one or two stories about Ron and Lavender from a time that, now, would never happen. "But Harry, we talked about this two years ago. It wasn't the right time for you to take on the duties of being a prefect when you had the weight of Lord Voldemort on your shoulders."

"And in my brain." Harry tapped at the scar on his forehead as if he could feel the space left by the destroyed Horcrux.

"Since that time, you've almost completely stopped disregarding the rules because, again, you no longer feel responsible for defending the school from a deranged megalomaniac. You've shown great leadership on the Quidditch pitch and in the classroom when you tutored the younger students. You even, I daresay, demonstrated how much respect you've garnered from your fellow students when you organized their response to the revelation that I am a werewolf."

"I had loads of help-"

Remus waved him off. "As do all of the Head Boys and Head Girls. Two years ago, Cedric Diggory was the Head Boy, and he looked to you for your advice. Last year, Stephanie Wheeler was the Head Girl, and she certainly looked to you for your advice."

Harry's features schooled themselves into a pained grimace. Remus assumed that that had more to do with the way he'd broken up with his first girlfriend than with anything else.

"You treat all of the students in this school kindly, whether you're protecting Luna Lovegood from a bully or whether you're steadfastly refusing to use your birthday party as an occasion to curry favor with the most popular and most well-connected students. You've dated a girl who was Sorted into Slytherin and you've made friends from all of the other Houses. You've earned that badge, Harry, even if you didn't even notice that you were doing it."

Remus had played with time. He had exploited powerful magic that had not been his own in a way that had been warned against for centuries. He had risked changing Harry into someone he ought never have been….

But here was Harry, enjoying his seventh year, playing Quidditch, taking advanced classes, making friends, and learning new skills, while still as wise and kind as ever.

As Remus beamed at Harry, the door to the classroom flew open and most of the seventh years burst inside.

Pride swelled in Remus yet again. Almost all of the seventh years had decided to take the NEWT in Defense. It was quite a change from the class three years before, which had had only ten students, most of whom barely spoke even when called upon.

As usual, there was a certain amount of segregation by House. (Remus often wondered whether he ought to implement alphabetical seating for the sixth and seventh year students, but thus far he had held off.) The Slytherins took the back corner nearest the door, in case they had to make a quick escape; the Ravenclaws were just a bit closer. The Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, though, were well-mixed, and that was something.

Lavender and Parvati seated themselves close to Susan and Hannah. All four of them continued giggling even after Remus produced a hexed skull and placed it on a table in the center of the room.

"Hannah?" he asked. "Are you and your friends ready to begin?"

Hannah blushed. "Yes, Professor," she said. Even that made the other three girls laugh harder.

"Oh, shut it," muttered one of the Ravenclaw boys from behind them.

"Just tell him what you've done so he can take points and we can start class," shrieked Pansy Parkinson from the Slytherin corner.

"I'm glad you're eager to begin, Pansy," Remus said, and it wasn't a lie. "Please approach the skull and tell me what hex has been placed upon it. You may bring your wand and cast any spell you like."

The class gradually quieted as Pansy approached the skull and, with real skill, correctly deduced that he had cast a thief's curse upon it.

"I don't think anyone would want to steal this, Professor," Pansy told him.

"I think you may be right," he agreed. "I'll have to cast a different curse next time. Can anyone tell me the four categories of curses commonly applied to objects…?"

The students answered eagerly, and the class ended far too quickly.

Hannah Abbot stayed behind; her three friends trailed after her. "We apologize for disrupting the class," said Hannah solemnly, and Remus told her that he understood perfectly well that the beginning of the term meant high spirits. He liked Hannah. She was sensitive and dramatic, but she was dedicated and always the first to evaluate her own behavior and apologize if she decided that she'd been wrong.

Susan and Lavender and Parvati all ducked their heads as if they were trying not to burst into a fresh round of giggles.

That was when Remus remembered, belatedly, that these four girls had been the four who had wagered a case of butterbeer on his relationship with Dora.

"Hannah," he said as conversationally as he could manage, "did Lavender and Parvati ever give you and Susan the butterbeer they owed you when I married Auror Tonks?"

The four of them laughed so loudly and sharply that it sounded as if it hurt.

"I told you he knew," gasped Lavender to Hannah.

"This is your fault," said Susan to Parvati.

"We had a right to go double or nothing," Lavender retorted.

"Indeed?" asked Remus.

"We've heard a rumor that Auror Tonks is pregnant," said Lavender, brazenly looking him in the eye. "We wanted to… congratulate you."

"We really, do, though!" said Hannah.

"That's what I said," said Lavender.

"You're making it sound like we're betting on the birth of his child."

"We are betting on the birth of his child."

"But we're still very happy for him! And for Auror Tonks!"

"Well, those things aren't mutually exclusive."

"Anyway, the professors bet every year on who's going to get Sorted into which House. Why can't we bet on them?"

It was getting out of hand. "Yes, Auror Tonks and I are expecting a child this spring."

The girls squealed and congratulated him again.

Indeed, the first weeks of the term were a constant stream of congratulations.

The first time, Dora's pregnancy had necessarily been kept a secret from all but their most trusted friends.

The general outpouring of kind wishes was welcome and wonderful.

* * *

It was beautiful when Remus and Dora spent half a dozen evenings speculating about the nature of Sirius' new project, for Sirius had practically moved into Grimmauld Place when he wasn't visiting Félicité in France.

Both Remus and Dora attempted to ask Sirius directly. They had no desire to see Sirius leave Hogsmeade even though they were newly married and expecting a baby; they rather enjoyed the dynamic that his presence brought to their shared home. Admittedly, Sirius wasn't such a sensitive sort that he was likely to give up his own home so Remus and Dora could be alone- not least because the cottage was Harry's home, too. Nor did Sirius look unhappy or unwell.

"Shouldn't you be more worried about where your pregnant wife is than where I am, Moony?" Sirius retorted when Remus asked why Sirius was spending so much time in the place he hated most. "If you and little Nymphadora can't entertain yourselves without me when you've been married for less than two years, I shudder to think how things will go when you've been together for a decade and my new godchild is causing all sorts of trouble."

And Sirius had Disapparated.

"Badeea let it slip to Tulip that she's been working with Sirius again," Dora announced gleefully about a week later. "She's cleaning up all of the portraits. The other ones aren't complicated like the one of my great-aunt Walburga, but they've been neglected for so long that they needed a professional. The thing is, Sirius didn't want Badeea to tell anyone."

"Perhaps you should summon Badeea to the Auror Office and have Mad-Eye help you interrogate her," Remus suggested, and he had meant it as a joke but it sounded like a good idea when he said it aloud.

It was odd, adjusting to a world where Sirius no longer needed him quite as much. When they'd been children, he'd needed Sirius far more than Sirius had needed him. When Sirius had been released from Azkaban, he'd been reliant on Remus in ways that were new to them both. Now, for the first time, they were essentially equals.

Remus had played with time. He had exploited powerful magic that had not been his own in a way that had been warned against for centuries. He had risked changing his old friend into someone his old friend had never been meant to be….

But Sirius was energetic and cheerful, and one day he came home and presented Remus and Dora with a silver rattle that had obviously been made by a goblin.

"Just deciding which Black heirlooms should be melted down and exchanged for galleons and which we should keep," he said.

The rattle did, indeed, bear the Black crest. "I had the _toujours pur_ nonsense sanded off," Sirius explained.

Remus accepted the rattle in the spirit in which it was intended. Then he brought it to school and let his seventh years check to see if they could find any hexes that he, Sirius, and Dora had missed.

(Draco apparently told Narcissa, who sent a strongly worded letter to Sirius. Sirius laughed.)

* * *

It was beautiful when Dora's body changed in a whole new way. Each time he looked at her, there was something new to admire. She had always been strong and beautiful. But that Dora had the ability- the truly magical ability- to grow a human being inside of her body amazed him each day.

There was the first sight of a bump; there were the first fluttery kicks; there were the mandatory jokes about how the baby might be morphing inside of her and might be born as a unicorn.

Dora smiled for hours on end as they chose bottles and toys and clothes and furniture for their child. She beamed when Andromeda produced relics from her own babyhood. (Andromeda looked at the Black family rattle and rolled her eyes, but said that it was good quality and they ought to keep it if they liked it.)

Remus loved Dora. The fact this _his_ child would be _half-Dora_ was better luck than he could have hoped for.

Soon they would be three. They would have love and adventures all their own.

Remus had played with time. He had exploited powerful magic that had not been his own in a way that had been warned against for centuries. He had risked changing Dora into someone she had never been meant to be….

But Dora, though she had never joined the Order of the Phoenix or fought in a war, was brave and funny and strong and loyal and clever and protective and dedicated and generous.

Soon he would see Teddy for the first time since he'd gone to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts almost five years before. And he would marvel, again, that Teddy was half-Dora.

* * *

It was beautiful when, as the spring term drew to a close, Harry began volunteering to teach Remus' classes when Dora went into labor.

"You have NEWTs," Remus reminded Harry. "I may need to leave the school while you're taking an exam. Even if I don't, you ought to be studying."

"Stephanie taught during the full moon last year. I'm as good at is she was."

"You're better," said Remus honestly. "But Stephanie wasn't trying to get top marks in all of the core subjects. There are very few professions as selective as the Aurors."

Harry shrugged, unconcerned. "I don't know if I want to be an Auror after all."

"Oh?" Remus wasn't entirely surprised. Many students questioned their choices as their time to leave Hogwarts grew near. Most of them returned to their original plans.

"I want to fly for England with Ginny at least once. Puddlemere United and the Appleby Arrows have already offered tryouts. Maybe I'll be an Auror later, but for now I don't need the NEWTs."

"It will be far easier for you to pass your NEWTs now than it will be in five years," said Remus more severely than he'd intended.

Harry laughed. "Of course I'll take them. But didn't you say that… before… I missed my whole seventh year? And I know I was still able to have-" he broke off suddenly. "Anyway, what if I want to be a professor instead of an Auror or a professional Seeker? I need more experience teaching."

"You would make a fine professor," agreed Remus.

"But not right away," said Harry cheekily. "After I've been Seeker for England and been Head of Aurors. So not until I'm really old, like thirty or forty."

"Go practice your Wronski Feint," said Remus.

* * *

It was most beautiful of all when Sirius interrupted his class.

Sirius didn't say anything.

He didn't need to say anything.

He appeared at the back of the room and caught Remus' eye. He nodded and smiled, and Remus knew that everything was all right, but that it was time to go.

Remus and Dumbledore had already determined that his classes would become extra study time as needed. After all, Dumbledore had reasoned, for many years the Defense professor was dead or imprisoned by late spring. It was practically school policy for the Defense curriculum to be interrupted before the year was out.

He dismissed the class- fourth-year Hufflepuffs- and they whooped with joy at their newly found free time while offering a smattering of congratulations as they bolted from the room.

"She's at St. Mungo's already," said Sirius. "Nothing's wrong, but Andromeda didn't want to deliver the baby herself if it wasn't absolutely necessary."

"Real Healers," Remus murmured. That was more than Dora had gotten the first time.

When he reached Dora's room, though, Dora was suggesting that if she morphed herself wide open, there would be no more contractions.

He slid into the room and took Dora's hand.

The Healer smiled at him. "She's close. No morphing required. Stop fighting it, Tonks. Let your body do what it was meant to do."

"Teddy," whispered Dora. "He's almost here. I'll finally get to meet him."

The Healer must have heard, because she looked worried when Dora gave a final push and the baby's cry pierced the air.

"You have a happy, healthy daughter," she said.

A girl.

Not Teddy.

Everything was not beautiful anymore.

_**To be continued.** _

* * *


	98. The Baby 3

The grayness crept from the edges of Remus' vision to the center and his muscles went numb as he stumbled from the room. Whatever he was going to do, whatever he had already done, he needed to sit down before he fell down.

He had been an invalid for at least one day per month for most of his life and ought to have been accustomed to his body's small betrayals. Nonetheless, this dizziness came as a surprise.

He managed to tell Ted and Andromeda to go inside and meet their granddaughter before he leaned against the wall lest his knees stop holding him up.

Sirius grabbed him by his shoulders. He only knew it was Sirius by scent and touch; he couldn't seem to see any longer.

"A girl," he murmured woozily. "Teddy's gone. Teddy's dead. I should be dead. I should have stayed dead. I should be gone."

And his ears somehow stopped hearing anything that wasn't already in his head.

When he came back to himself, not entirely, but just enough, Sirius was shouting.

_"… And if you dare to take it out on this child that she isn't exactly who you expected her to be, Remus, I will personally make certain that she trades you in for someone who will appreciate her for everything she is. I lived through being the child my parents didn't want, and I will have better for my goddaughter!"_

Remus couldn't quite form the words to tell Sirius that the baby would not be his goddaughter, no, because Sirius was too self-absorbed and self-righteous for the job. This wasn't about Sirius and his family, it was about Remus and his family.

And Sirius was here and Teddy was not.

Sirius had gained the most out of anyone over the last five years.

Teddy had lost the most. Teddy had lost his _life_ .

Not that Sirius cared. Sirius had James' son, and James was the only person who had ever really mattered to Sirius, so why would Sirius care if Remus' son was never going to live?

Remus drew his wand. It was only a stinging hex, nothing that would really hurt Sirius even if Sirius didn't block it reflexively (Sirius blocked it reflexively). But any magic cast in the corridors of St. Mungo's resulted in a swift and final response.

A mannequin appeared out of nowhere and sealed Remus in a bubble from which it felt as if all the oxygen had been removed.

No; he could breathe. But he could not, for an instant, perform magic and being cut off from magic felt much the same as being cut off from his own breath.

He was deposited on the street outside the hospital, feeling as if he had used expired Floo Powder while simultaneously being hit with a powerful banishing charm.

Sirius appeared next to him.

Sirius, the self-righteous, self-absorbed bastard, was laughing.

"It'll be a funny story for her some day," said Sirius with unexpected calmness. _"Fifteen minutes after you were born, your father got so annoyed at your godfather that he threw a stinging hex at him right there in the hospital and they both got thrown out."_

"It's not funny!" Remus snarled.

"Not today. But eventually. This baby…"

"It's not about her." _It's not about you and it's not about her._ "It's about Teddy."

"It's her birthday. Perhaps it ought to be about her. The day Harry was born-"

The day Harry was born they'd all celebrated, even in the midst of the war, because James had always done everything right. There had been no concerns that James would abandon Lily and his child. There has been no concerns that Harry might be a werewolf.

_What if the baby girl in Dora's arms was a werewolf?_

"How would you like it," asked Remus, "if we just swapped Harry out for some other child whose father was James and whose mother was Lily? You wouldn't miss Harry at all, is that what you're telling me? You'd just celebrate your new godchild and forget Harry ever existed even if you were the only one who could remember Harry. I think I'll tell Harry that you said that."

Sirius looked for an instant as if he might punch Remus, and Remus secured his grip on his wand. He would welcome the attack. He would welcome a fight to the death.

Then Sirius, visibly, controlled his temper. The tension drained from his shoulders. The flush in his cheeks receded, leaving behind his normal, gratuitously attractive complexion.

"I know that you know where babies come from."

Remus didn't dignify that with a response. Yes, he knew where babies came from. He'd berated himself a thousand times when Dora had first told him that she was pregnant with Teddy. Why hadn't he been more careful when he'd cast the spell on himself? _There were spells to stop women having babies in the middle of a war, after all!_ But of course it hadn't worked. And he had berated himself another thousand times for not resigning himself to a lifetime of celibacy if he hadn't wanted to pass his curse along to an innocent woman and child.

"You told me more than once that you wanted to limit the changes you made in the world so that you'd be able to see Teddy again."

"I want a lot of things. For example, right now I want you to sod off. _Cer i grafu._ " The Welsh didn't usually roll of his tongue. The language his mother had taught him must have come to his mind now, as he realized, after years of denial, how terribly he had failed his own child.

He should have known this would happen.

He _had_ known this would happen.

He had pretended to himself that he hadn't known that this would happen because it was so much fun to go through life with a wonderful career and a loving wife and friends and an almost complete lack of megalomaniacal dark wizards.

He wasn't surprised.

He was shocked.

That he had known that the odds of the right sperm hitting the right egg at the right moment were essentially nil, but he was still horrified and riveted now that there was nothing he could do but watch the results of the mistakes he'd made.

Sirius stood beside him.

"You're still here," said Remus.

"I don't speak Welsh," Sirius said. "You never bothered to teach me what _cer i grafu_ means."

" _Go to hell_ , basically," Remus translated. "You could buy it embroidered on a throw pillow in a shop where I used to work." That had been during the first painful years after James and Lily's deaths. He'd been tempted to purchase one, but he'd barely been able to afford food.

He'd felt sorry for himself then- poor and sick and alone.

Now he was less poor and less sick and less alone, and he still felt sorry for himself.

No, not for himself.

For Teddy.

For Teddy who had only lived a few days.

For Teddy who had been killed by his own father.

"I can't do this," said Remus.

"You haven't got a choice," said Sirius, not unkindly. "You ran away from your wife and child once, and you regretted it."

It was true.

He'd had a responsibility to learn to be better when he'd been granted this bizarre, unexpected second chance.

He had failed. He had failed like he'd failed Teddy.

"You have to get back to Tonks eventually," Sirius continued. "I think sooner is a better idea than later."

"Yes, the sooner I forget about Teddy, the better, is that it?" Remus snapped. He knew it wasn't what Sirius meant. He didn't care. He didn't want to look at Sirius or talk to Sirius. He wanted Sirius to go away. He'd told Sirius to go away- in more than one language- but Sirius hadn't gone.

"No one's asking you to forget about Teddy."

Remus turned away from Sirius. Sirius stepped a neat circle around him so they were facing each other again. "One year on Halloween, a very wise person mentioned to me that grief isn't linear. He told me that I might have a day, or a week, or a month where I was fine, and then all of a sudden it would ruin me all over."

"So what?" asked Remus, who remembered the conversation but no longer cared.

"So, you will grieve Teddy for the rest of your life. You will also adore your daughter for the rest of your life, and if you do not, it still won't bring Teddy back."

Sirius was undoubtedly correct, but Remus didn't care about that, either. He cared only about the turquoise-haired baby who existed only in his memory.

He sat on the steps, and he didn't have the energy to object when Sirius sat next to him.

* * *

Remus wasn't certain how much time had passed when Harry arrived. It might have been a minute; it might have been an hour. It probably hadn't been a whole day, but Remus couldn't be sure.

"What's wrong?" asked Harry. "Why aren't you inside?"

"We were thrown out," said Sirius, because Remus wasn't going to bother saying anything to Harry. He'd done his duty by Harry. Harry had his godfather; Harry had a proper education; Harry hadn't watched his friends die; Harry had very nearly had a proper adolescence. Teddy was dead, but Harry was thriving.

"What did you do?" Harry's scolding tone might have been funny in another time and in another place.

"Remus hexed me."

If Sirius was looking for a reaction, he would be sorely disappointed.

"Did you deserve it?" Harry wanted to know.

"Possibly," said Sirius. "Look, Harry-"

"Is the baby all right?"

"She's fine as far as we know."

"So is- is this about Teddy?"

Remus' head shot up. He'd confided in Sirius and he'd owed an explanation to Dora, but he was certain he'd never spoken to Harry about Teddy. He rose to his feet and looked Harry in the eye. " _How do you know about Teddy?"_

"I met him," said Harry with an odd sort of conviction. "I met him in King's Cross Station after Voldemort cast the killing curse on me the second time."

 _"You met him?_ " Remus seized Harry by the front of his robes. "You knew- you saw-"

"He told me that when you died, you hoped he would understand that you died to make a better world for him."

Remus nodded stiffly. That was almost exactly what he had said to Harry a breath before he'd found himself on the train to Hogwarts, five years worse for wear.

"He knew that you wanted to come home to him, and that by trying you- you made a world where he couldn't exist. He said that there was, well," and here Harry blushed, "too much chance in that kind of thing. He said that any children you had wouldn't be less worthy of life than he was, but that they wouldn't be him. He said he knew that you were holding onto hope, and that when you lost that hope I should tell you that he does understand. He understands that you were trying to make a better world for him."

Teddy's words echoed his own.

Teddy's words should never have had to echo his own.

Remus' hands slipped from Harry's robes and he sat heavily on the hospital steps once again.

Harry had known for over two years that Teddy had been robbed of his chance to live.

Remus didn't ask Harry why he hadn't said anything sooner. For one thing, it didn't matter here and now on an April evening in London while his wife and daughter awaited him inside. For another thing, Remus had no standing to criticize Harry considering how he himself had spent five years carefully meting out his knowledge of the future with sometimes disastrous results.

"Sirius," asked Remus roughly, "will you go to Hogsmeade and fetch your Pensieve for me?"

Harry brightened. "I'll show you everything!" he volunteered.

"I don't imagine that will work." Remus remembered all too well his failed attempts to show Dumbledore what had happened after his own death, and he didn't want to put Harry through such an experiment. "I want the Pensieve for another purpose."

Sirius nodded. He drew his wand, stepped to a Disapparition point, and vanished.

"But Harry, can you tell me everything, everything, you remember about Teddy?"

Harry smiled and began. "He was about my age when he appeared to me. He was wearing school robes. He was a Hufflepuff like Tonks, but he was a prefect like you. He teased me like her, but he smiled like you…"

_**To be continued.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note/Auxiliary Disclaimer: Some of my favorite fics over the years have ended with a playlist, where the author shouts out the music that inspired the fic. Since I'm musically illiterate, that's not an option for me. Instead, out of all of the books I've read in the 2+ years I spent writing this monster, here are the ten that most crept into the fic. Anyway, in no particular order beyond the first five being fiction and the second five being non-fiction:
> 
> 1\. Sweet Thames by Matthew Kneale. In 1849 London, an engineer deals with the mystery of cholera and the mystery of his missing wife. This novel makes the list because I happened to buy it at Hatchards, King's Cross-St Pancras Station. Do you know how often I get to buy books a stone's throw from Platform 9 3/4? Not often enough. Plus the nice saleswoman working there gave me a long list of other historical fiction to read.
> 
> 2\. Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna. Bounty hunter Alice Vega searches for two missing girls (first in a series). I find that this sort of genre fiction is kind of a mood when you're writing about the adult members of the Order of the Phoenix.
> 
> 3\. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, in which a migrant mother and son cross Mexico to get to the United States. The mother's repeated thought that she can sacrifice her own life for her child's exactly once eventually snuck into Sirius' thoughts about Harry.
> 
> 4\. The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss (side story to the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy). I guess an epic fantasy series makes sense to include on this list anyway, but I'm including the side novella instead of the story proper because of the author's note. It was nice to see the actual, published author of an actual, popular series warning would-be readers that not everything is to everyone's taste. It made me feel better about ignoring the reviewers who told me I shouldn't have let this story go on for 20 chapters after Voldemort's death, even though I was particularly interested in the adjustment of the characters to a world where Voldemort was no longer an automatic reason for being.
> 
> 5\. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Because midway through my writing this story, it seemed like everyone read this book and either loved it or hated it, so much so that it feels fixed in time for me. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the novel's sense of place and reverence for nature more than make up for any willing suspension of disbelief required.
> 
> 6\. The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump by Andrew McCabe. I thought that the strongest part of this memoir was not the political passages that were quoted in every newspaper but parts about the day-to-day workings of the FBI. And that ended up coloring Tonks' attitude toward her job just a bit.
> 
> 7\. Heavy by Kiese Laymon. This memoir is mostly about family, weight, racism in the United States, etc., but there's a moment when the author is talking about teaching, and needing to find a way to like his students, and that bled into my portrayal of Remus at work.
> 
> 8\. Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York by Stacy Horn. I'm assuming you can tell from the title that this influenced my thinking about Azkaban.
> 
> 9\. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. Is it weird if I say this was a cheerful book to read during the pandemic? Maybe not, since I've heard other people express a similar snetiment.
> 
> 10\. Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer. Unquestionably the most useful book about writing I've ever read, and hilarious too. Those reviewers who had to tell me to stop writing the French characters' lines in French in this story will be delighted to know that Dreyer said the exact same thing. :-/


	99. The Baby 4

Harry patiently repeated the every detail he remembered about Teddy over and over. Remus memorized each word Harry said the first time. The second time he made certain that Harry hadn't forgotten anything the first time. The third time, he just reveled in the feeling of not being the only person who had ever met Teddy.

"You were a wonderful godfather," Remus said. "The best thing I ever did for Teddy was choose you for his godfather. Knowing you has been one of the greatest honors of my life, Harry."

A bit of color crept into Harry's cheeks, but he kept his eyes locked on Remus. "Knowing you has been one of the greatest honors of my life," he repeated. "What you did to protect all of us- all the people who would have died- you're never going to get credit for it. I don't think you really care about that. But I don't think you should forget it, either.

Remus' attention was drawn more to the depth and timbre of Harry's voice than to the meaning of Harry's words. Harry had grown to manhood again. Remus' journey through the past was over.

"What day is it?" he asked Harry frantically. He knew he had written the date half a dozen times during his classes and review sessions that morning, but his morning was something of another world.

"May 2."

_May 2, 1998._

The day of the Battle of Hogwarts.

The day he had died.

The day, if Harry's recitation of his conversation with Teddy was to be believed, that Dora had died.

He'd wondered. He'd suspected. Now he knew. Teddy would have been an orphan. A much beloved orphan, the child of Andromeda's old age, but still a boy who would never know his mother's love.

"All right?" asked Harry. "I know you aren't, but you've gone pale-"

Remus plastered a wan smile to his face. "It's the anniversary of my death."

"Oh," said Harry. "Was I meant to get you some sort of greeting card?"

The weak attempt at humor was just enough to help Remus gather himself. "Why don't you go upstairs and tell Dora and her parents that Sirius and I got ourselves thrown out and that I'll be back as soon as I can?"

"You can't come back inside now?" There was a skeptical look in Harry's eye, as if he didn't quite trust Remus to do the right thing. Remus didn't blame him.

"I want to wait for Sirius to return with the Pensieve." It wasn't untrue, although Remus thought he might have made up another excuse had this one not been so readily at hand. "He ought to be back by now. We did find the Pensieve after the fire, didn't we?"

"Yeah," said Harry. "It was one of the things I took to school while we were rebuilding. I'm not sure where we put it, though. It might take Sirius a while to find it."

That made sense. "If he's not here soon, I'll send you after him. But for now, please assure Dora that I didn't abandon her?"

Harry nodded and turned toward the deserted department store that concealed the entrance to St. Mungo's. "I'm here to see Nymphadora Tonks," he whispered to the mannequin in the window. And he vanished.

* * *

Tonks hurt.

She was used to pain. As clumsy as she was, she had spent a lifetime becoming accustomed to bruised knees and stubbed toes and cracked teeth. Her training as an Auror had left her able to keep moving through almost any physical or magical attack. Hadn't she chased down Igor Karkaroff on a broken ankle? Hadn't she been out of bed two hours after the capture of Shadow Sherwood had left her leaking blood from her every pore?

None of it felt quite like this. Her body had been ripped in two. (The Healers didn't seem concerned. The Healers said they'd sealed up the tears. The Healers thought her ability to morph would return once her body resumed its usual state.)

Her parents hovered over her, and that was nice, and she was grateful, but it ought to have been Remus.

He'd left the room as soon as he'd seen their daughter's face.

Their daughter was beautiful. Her head was a little bit smushed, and her skin was as red as a Chinese Fireball's scales, but still, she was beautiful.

Not that it should have mattered whether she was beautiful. Tonks, with her ability to look however she liked, considered herself to be uniquely qualified when it came to understanding that a person's insides, not their outsides, mattered.

(Metaphorical insides, she clarified to herself. Her literal insides burned and oozed.)

She'd feared for many months that this would happen. She'd feared that Remus had wanted to turn her into that other person, that woman who had fought alongside him in a secret resistance, that woman who had given birth to his son. She'd feared that Remus didn't really know her or want her as she was now.

She'd brushed those fears aside when she'd seen him arrested and taken to Azkaban. The thought of losing him forever to the cold grayness of the wizarding prison had prompted her to take a chance. And indeed, the first years of their marriage had been exhilarating and comforting all at once.

But he'd seen their daughter who wasn't their son and he'd left. He'd left even though she was the one who'd been ripped in half.

She knew him well. She felt the weight of Hope's necklace against her collarbone. She trusted that Remus would come back. She loved him.

But in that moment, she didn't like him very much.

The baby slept in Andromeda's arms as Andromeda sat on the edge of Tonks' bed. Tonks held her mother's gaze for what seemed like an eternity before Andromeda spoke. "The memory of man runneth not to the contrary," she murmured.

"What?"

"I will never forget the day Sirius was born," said Andromeda, and her tone took on a peculiar lilt that Tonks associated with only the worst sort of isolationist pureblood. "My father and my uncle laughed and cried all at once. My mother had failed three times. She hadn't produced a proper heir. No matter how powerful Bella was, no matter how clever Cissy was, we were all three of us failures. We couldn't carry on the name. We couldn't be the head of the family. But Aunt Walburga succeeded where Mother failed. Sirius meant that the family would live on for another generation."

"Pureblood mania," said Tonks dismissively, as she had often heard Andromeda say.

"I thought so, too, once. It simply isn't. Men of all walks of life- Muggle, magical, rich, poor, living in every corner of the world- they want sons. It isn't just about the family name. It's about thinking boys are stronger and more capable. It's about thinking that fathers prove their own virility when they have a son. It's about teaching the next generation how to rule the world. Did you know that Muggle kings used to behead their wives if they gave birth to daughters instead of sons? Did you know that marriages last longer if couples have a son than they do if they only have a daughter?"

"That's enough, 'Dromeda," Ted interrupted. Tonks turned to looked at him in surprise. Her father never spoke sharply to her mother. Her father never spoke sharply, full stop.

"What did I say that wasn't true?" asked Andromeda. The baby stirred in her arms. "For whatever reason, Remus and Nymphadora were convinced that this baby would be a boy. When they learned otherwise, he staggered out of this room looking as pale as a ghost and he hasn't returned."

"There are many reasons to be overwhelmed by the birth of your child that have nothing to do with whether that child is a boy or a girl. I can assure you that I never once, never once, wished for Dora to be anyone other than who she is."

Tonks felt a warm spark glow in her chest. She knew that it was true.

Andromeda, too, softened. "I know that, Ted. And I know that many men would agree with you. But many would not."

"Perhaps." Ted didn't look entirely happy with Andromeda's position, but he was willing to accept it, at least for the moment. "I think that we owe Remus the benefit of the doubt."

Andromeda raised an eyebrow. Tonks was a bit surprised, herself. Ted had not exactly objected to her marriage, but he hadn't been as resolutely supportive as Andromeda, who had never been even slightly surprised that her daughter had been entirely non-traditional in her choice of husband.

(Remus had said it had been the other way around in the other reality. Tonks didn't want to think about the other reality. She and her daughter existed in exactly one reality, and they were going to seize every joy and challenge before them.)

"Fine," said Andromeda at last. "When Remus returns, he may explain himself. Until then, I shall keep an open mind."

Tonks didn't think her mother's mind sounded completely open.

"I'll admit that it was…. worrisome when Dora was born," said Ted. "Do you remember, 'Dromeda? We were practically children ourselves. We couldn't expect any advice and support from your family, of course. Only half of my family knew about magic, and we couldn't exactly hide that our daughter's hair changed color every ten minutes. And on top of that… yes, she was a girl. I knew about little boys. I'd been a little boy not ten years before. I wasn't sure I knew how to be a parent to a little girl. I had a moment of panic."

"But you didn't abandon me."

"Nor did Remus abandon Dora. He knew her adoring parents were right here." He walked around the bed to drape an arm over Andromeda and stroke the sleeping baby's cheek with one finger. "I believe I promised Dora years ago that we would always be available to help with her children when the Auror Department's schedule wasn't cooperating. You may have noticed that most of our friends have young children now, so we're hardly too old and decrepit to be useful."

There was a gentle knock on the door. All three of them looked up. "Come in," called Tonks, her heart leaping with anticipation. She couldn't wait to see Remus holding their daughter, feel Remus stroking her hair, hear Remus apologize for being kept away from her at such an inopportune moment by circumstances beyond his control…

It was Harry.

Tonks forced herself to smile. The boy looked more than a bit uncomfortable.

She never wanted Harry to feel uncomfortable with his family. And her family was his family, now.

"Wotcher, Harry! Would you like to hold your new cousin?"

Harry's eyes widened. "Er- I- don't know how."

"It's easy enough," said Ted pleasantly. He gestured to a chair. Harry sat down obediently as Andromeda rose from the edge of the bed with the baby in her arms.

"You always support her head and neck," Andromeda narrated. "One hand under her head, one hand under her bottom, and bring her close to your chest."

"If you can catch a Snitch, you can certainly hold a baby," said Tonks as her daughter settled into Harry's arms. "By the way, Harry, do you happen to know where my husband is?"

"He sent me to tell you. He and Sirius accidentally got thrown out. He says he'll be back as soon as he can."

Tonks didn't doubt that it was the truth.

But years of interrogating witnesses and suspects left her doubting that it was the whole truth.

* * *

Remus heard the pop of Apparition and wheeled around, ready to scold Sirius for taking so long even if it wasn't Sirius' fault that no one had thought to tell him where they'd stowed the Pensieve. (Not that Remus could have done so; he didn't recall where they'd put it. It was in a wardrobe, somewhere, probably.)

It wasn't Sirius.

It was Lyall.

"What are you doing out here?" asked Lyall. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Remus lied poorly. "She's healthy and happy. Sirius and I managed to get ourselves thrown out for sparring in the corridor and I'm waiting a moment before I go back inside."

Lyall evaluated Remus silently. "That doesn't sound like you and Sirius."

Remus thought that it ought to have sounded exactly like any of his friends to anyone who had known them during their school years, and Lyall _had_ known them during their school years, so…

"Is it that you wanted a boy? I know you expected a boy."

Remus was too shocked to be offended. Was he the sort of man who would storm out of the hospital moments after his wife gave birth because he wanted a son, not a daughter?

Technically, he supposed that he was exactly that sort of man.

"I- I preferred a daughter at first," he admitted. He'd forgotten that that had ever been the case until he'd said it out loud."I wanted the child to be as much like Dora as possible."

Lyall smiled at Remus the way Lyall had used to smile at Hope, and Remus knew then that there was a particular besotted expression on his own face.

"Then…" Then what? Then Teddy had arrived and Remus had loved him completely? "This baby wasn't our first."

Lyall looked puzzled, but only for a fraction of a second. "Miscarriages are… rather more common than people think. One in ten pregnancies, something of that nature."

Remus didn't want to know why Lyall had that statistic on the tip of his tongue. It might have been nothing; Lyall had always been the sort of person who relished learning facts and retained them indefinitely.

"There's no blame in a miscarriage. This… I am to blame for our daughter being here instead of our son."

"I'm certain that's not true."

"I'm certain it is. I can't give you details. I can only ask you to believe me when I tell you that I killed my son."

Lyall nodded slowly. "I'll accept that only for the sake of argument and not because I can fathom it having any basis in fact."

"There are things in this world no one can fathom," Remus returned. Lyall had said that, often, when he was deeply engaged in his research.

"Very true," said Lyall with a whisper of a smile on his face. "One thing I can fathom, however, is what it feels like to believe that you are responsible for failing your child horribly. Inadvertently, to be sure. But completely, and irreparably."

Remus' mouth went dry. He knew that Fenrir Greyback had targeted him because of his father's words. He knew that his father had never anticipated such a consequence. He knew that his father had spent the rest of his life striving to alleviate the damage.

He would never forget the night his father had fought off Fenrir Greyback- too late to save Remus' humanity, but in time to save Remus' life.

"I used to look at a photograph of you sitting in your mother's lap. I took it not two weeks before you were attacked." Remus nodded. He remembered the photograph. He thought he'd seen it fairly recently, perhaps when he had been searching for remembrances of James and Lily for Harry. "I would look at it and think, _oh, there's Remus._ As if I hadn't seen you in the flesh that very day. Now, you would have grown and changed even if you'd never been bitten. But the bite meant that those changes happened far too quickly. You always had to control yourself, be aware of the dangers you posed to other people, worry that your secret wasn't safe. You were a different boy after the bite. In a way, I killed my son the day I insulted Fenrir Greyback."

"And how do you live with it?" asked Remus as he felt the weight of Teddy's tiny body in his arms.

"The way I live with any other sort of grief. One day at a time. During the most difficult years, your mother was always there to remind me to appreciate the son I had instead of the son I thought you might have been had I kept my mouth closed that day. The way you rose to the challenge was remarkable, Remus. You did everything your fellow students at Hogwarts did, but you did it in the face of extreme prejudice while you were terribly ill and hiding your illness from most of the students and half of the staff."

Dumbledore had said something similar, once, but Remus found it difficult to accept a compliment of any sort while his wife and daughter lay in the hospital without him. It didn't matter that Ted and Andromeda would spoil Dora and the baby rotten; Remus was the one who ought to have been doing the spoiling.

He wondered whether he had learned anything from his second chance.

He decided that he had.

He took his father by the arm and guided him toward the hidden entrance to St. Mungo's. "Would you like to meet your granddaughter?" he asked.

**_To be concluded._ **

* * *

(Final) Author's Note: In which I try to cover the questions I've been asked but I haven't answered. And in which I throw in a few of my own questions just to be a smartass, because I'm allowed.

This note, like this fic, is stupid-long. Do feel free to skip if lengthy author's notes are not your thing. I sometimes enjoy reading them, so I wrote one.

_What are the romantic endgames for Harry and his friends?_

When I started writing this fic, I had somehow forgotten what a very big deal shipping is in the Harry Potter fandom. Hey, I'd been gone a long time! And I never was a particular shipper myself… I'm not ride-or-die for any ship within the fandom.

I actually adjusted the notes in the earlier chapters to reflect this, but I'll say it again now: there is no romantic endgame for Harry and company. Do you want to imagine Harry and Ginny flying off into the sunset to play Quidditch for England together? Please do. Do you want to imagine Harry crossing paths with Stephanie again after she establishes herself as a magizoologist and thinking he let a good thing go? That's equally valid. Do you want to picture Harry and Hermione admitting that they only used the "we love each other like siblings" line so Viktor wouldn't worry? Have at it. Do you want to think of Harry slowly realizing that Ron is home to him in every way? Hey, I think one of the great failings of the fandom is the lack of Harry/Ron fic. Harry/Cedric, Harry/Cho, Harry/Draco, Harry/Daphne, Harry/Susan, Harry/Whomever? Go ahead. Choose your own ending with my blessing, please.

And the same goes for Hermione and Ron. They can get together. Or she can keep Krum and he can keep Lavender. Or any other combination that floats your boat.

_Okay, but what about Sirius? And while I'm at it, would you write a Sirius/OC fic? And what's your favorite Sirius/OC fic?_

Same deal with Sirius. He ends up with whoever you'd like. I personally don't know that that's anyone in this story. Oddly, I think Badeea comes the closest to being a match for him. They have similar core values but their completely different points of view give him a challenge I think he enjoys, even though she kind of annoys him.

As for my favorite Sirius/OC fic, I haven't got one. I've read some that have been fine, but never one that became my headcanon. And I haven't read any in the past decade or so because I was on a break from the fandom and then spending most of my fandom time on this monster of a fic.

I don't plan to write a Sirius/OC fic because the proper OC has never presented herself to me in all my years of fascination with Sirius.

.

_What was up with the King's Cross Station Teddy telling Harry that Remus was very close to the veil and could slip over to Death as he had meant to be all this time… was it just referring to how injured/ill he became in Azkaban?_

Yup, that was all it was.

_Speaking of Azkaban, what do you envision in Peter's/Wormtail's future? Does he get Azkaban for life or is there a chance at redemption? Will Remus ever see him again? He did kinda have Remus's back in there…_

Yes, I think Peter is in Azkaban for life. He murdered a lot of people. However, I also think there will be some contact between Peter/Remus. Sirius, showing heretofore unsuspected levels of tact, will pretend he doesn't know. And he will never forgive Peter and would probably commit the murder he was imprisoned for should Peter be released.

_And speaking of redemption, what do you envision Harry and Dudley's relationship as being like moving forward? Do you think Harry will try to maintain any contact at all?_

Absolutely. I meant to slide an exchange of Christmas presents into one of the last chapters but it didn't happen.

_We didn't get to see as much of Luna or Neville as we did when they were in Dumbledore's Army, any plans for any changes in their life trajectory?_

They will come of age in a way that's less dramatic and violent, but at their cores they remain unchanged and I see their life trajectories as being fairly similar to canon.

_Is Umbridge really toothless now?_

She's down for the moment. She's probably not out. I expect that she'll cause more trouble in the future, but she'll never get the kind of power she had in canon because there was no second war to give her an opening.

_Did I incite a double or nothing bet?_

You sure did! There are two passages in this story which were a direct reaction to reader comments. One was the double or nothing bet between Harry's classmates, and one was chapter 36, in which Remus explains why he didn't go straight to Dumbledore with his knowledge of the future. Chapter 36 is actually one of my favorite bits of the story- I really enjoy writing Remus/Sirius coming at a problem from different angles where neither one of them is wrong.

_What was your favorite part of the story?_

In addition to the passage I mentioned in the previous question, I love chapter 47, a/k/a the Tonks kills Karkaroff chapter. There isn't enough Tonks-as-Auror content in this fandom or in this fic. Another favorite passage is in chapter 56, when Harry's friends all send owls RSVPing to his birthday party. I got a kick out of trying to get into twenty characters' heads in one sentence each.

I'm too close to writing the more recent chapters to know whether I like any of them. :)

But I do always enjoy writing Sirius. And under no circumstances will I concede that the post-Voldemort chapters focusing on Sirius shouldn't have been written because Voldemort was dead. I consider this a character piece, not an action piece, despite the admittedly excessive length.

_If you were to write a sequel or a side story to TBE, what would it focus on?_

Andromeda after seeing Narcissa at Regulus' funeral. Or Dudley sending a Christmas present to Harry. Or Harry and Hermione visiting Viktor Krum while he trained with his team. Or Harry and Stephanie's romance. I was gratified that several of you seemed to like Stephanie! I like her, too.

This fic is so damn long that most of my side stories got incorporated into the main story.

_What happened to the Marauders Map?_

You'll find out in the last chapter. 


	100. The End

The door to Dora's room was propped open and Remus could hear her laughter from halfway down the corridor. He smiled in response. His selfish moment of grief couldn't have done too much damage if Dora was laughing.

Remus and Lyall poked their heads into the room to see Andromeda removing the baby from Harry's arms and returning her to Dora.

Dora's eyes met Remus'. "You just missed it," she said merrily. "Harry was all right with holding her until she opened her eyes and moved, and then he was begging Mum to take her away."

"I wasn't begging, exactly," said Harry. He seemed to consider it. "All right, I was begging." Harry, too, seemed to have found the incident amusing.

"Maybe you'll hold her while she's awake when she's a little bit older," Remus suggested. "She'll be twice as old tomorrow as she is today, after all."

"I hadn't thought of it quite like that," said Dora, beaming down at the baby. "That's wild, isn't it?" She looked up from her daughter's face just long enough to greet Lyall. "I'm glad all of her grandparents are here," she said.

Not _all_ , of course. He missed Hope all over again. He supposed a person never stopped missing his mother. He supposed Teddy would never have stopped missing Dora.

"Did we miss anything other than Harry finding his limits as a baby-holder?" Remus asked rather than voicing his thoughts.

"My parents debated whether you left because you were horrified that the baby is a girl."

Remus couldn't help laughing. "My dad asked me the same thing." He circled the bed and, for the first time, truly drank in the sight of his daughter.

Happily, she looked like Dora.

"The answer is no," he said as he ran his finger over his daughter's impossibly delicate cheek. "This little girl is perfect, and the more any child of mine can resemble Dora, the better."

"She looks like you," Dora objected. "The shape of her eyes, the curve of her lip…"

"Be that as it may." Remus waited for Dora to look at him. "I'm sorry, Dora. I did panic, and I handled it poorly. I apologize. You had more reasons to worry than I ever could have, and you had no way of running out of the room. You deserved to have me here waiting on you hand and foot. I assure you this will not become a pattern."

Dora raised her eyes to look at her parents, Lyall, and Harry. "He's very good at apologizing, isn't he?"

She kissed him on the cheek. He knew he was forgiven. He also know that she would be asking for a more detailed explanation the moment they didn't have quite so much of an audience. "I knew you didn't really want to behead me because we have a daughter instead of a son," she said.

"What? _Behead_ you?"

"Mum said that that's what the Muggle kings used to do."

" _Why_ ?" asked Lyall wonderingly.

"It was complicated," injected Ted. "I believe technically Henry VIII executed his wives for adultery. And even though he did eventually get the son he wanted, the boy didn't live very long. As it happened, his daughter Elizabeth made a wonderful queen. She ruled for almost fifty years and is loved to this day."

"The Muggles still make films and write books about her," Harry chimed in.

"Elizabeth," Dora mused, turning the name over in her mouth. She cocked her head to look up at Remus. "It's a good name, isn't it? For the magical world or the Muggle one. Not something she'd have to spend the rest of her life explaining." She looked down at the baby. "Would you like to be called Elizabeth?"

The baby seemed neither to consent nor object. Her wide eyes were fixed but unfocused as she looked at Dora.

"Elizabeth it is, then," said Remus. A wide grin split his face. Elizabeth Lupin. Lizzie Lupin. His daughter, Elizabeth. His princess. His daughter Elizabeth and his wife Dora. Yes, he liked the idea very much.

Dora tugged on the gold necklace that lay against her collarbone. "Elizabeth Hope."

Remus reflected, not for the first time, that he had never expected to be so happy. He wished his mother could have seen it. Dora couldn't change that, but she could make certain that Hope was remembered on the day her granddaughter was born.

And when Sirius arrived with the Pensieve, Remus could make certain that Teddy, too, would be remembered on the day his sister was born.

He introduced Sirius to his goddaughter properly and thanked him for bringing the Pensieve. Then he asked for a moment of privacy, explaining that he had something to show Dora.

Sirius and Harry seemed to know what he meant to do. The others did not, but they acquiesced all the same, suggesting that they needed to visit the nearby shops for gifts now that they knew Elizabeth's name.

* * *

Remus sat at the foot of Dora's bed; Dora propped herself up at the head. Elizabeth and the Pensieve lay between them.

Dora eyed the Pensieve with a mix of distaste and curiosity. Remus couldn't blame her. The last time he'd shared his memories with her, the ensuing conversation had gone poorly to say the least.

"I think you've realized,"he said quietly, "that I wasn't upset to have Lizzie." He stroked the baby's shoulder with one finger. She sighed in her sleep but didn't otherwise respond. "I was devastated to realize that we would never have Teddy. Not that that excuses my actions."

"I know."

Simple. Straightforward. _I know._

"As we move on with our lives- the three of us- I wanted you to see the person who won't be there. You can say no, of course."

There was a tiny strangled noise in her throat but her voice was steady. "I won't refuse to see my son."

Remus nodded and drew his wand. It wasn't difficult to focus on one of his few memories of Teddy. It was fitting that his very last memory came to mind first.

_Remus sat in a rocking chair in the corner of the nursery in Dora's parents' house. Teddy's eyes fluttered open._

_Remus used his wand to conjure circles of smoke to amuse Teddy. Teddy was still too young to grab for the circles, too young even to follow their movements with his half-focused eyes. But when Remus tinted the smoke so it was turquoise, Teddy's hair suddenly flashed turquoise as well. Chuckling, Remus tinted the smoke pink, then golden, then a deep blue-purple. Teddy kept pace enthusiastically._

_Dora entered the nursery, drawn by Remus' laughter._

_"Enjoy it now," she teased, a smile lighting her beautiful face. "Metamorphmagi are nothing but trouble. Ask me how I know."_

_"I'm looking forward to every bit of it," Remus returned easily. "I hoped he would look like you, and now he can look like all of the yous."_

_"It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd looked like you." Dora strode across the room and attempted to perch on the edge of the rocking chair. She slipped and fell to the floor with a pained thud._

_Remus hurried to settle Dora in the chair with Teddy in her arms while he perched against the windowsill and admired them._

_"Well, I certainly hope he inherits his father's ability to walk across a room without knocking anything over," said Dora merrily as the color returned to her pale face. She shifted Teddy in her arms to see if he would nurse. After some hesitation, he did._

_"I hope he has your spirit," said Remus. "And your loyalty. And your openness."_

_"And I hope he has your humor. Your intelligence. Your ability to follow the rules once in a while so maybe he'll have a shot at making prefect in school."_

_"I hope he follows the rules just often enough," Remus decided…_

The memory faded and remade itself. Remus was in the kitchen now, cradling Teddy's warm, fragile head with one hand and telling him that he would always be loved. Then he was kissing Dora and reminding her that she had not yet recovered from childbirth and that she was in no condition to fight. He promised that he would take down enough Death Eaters for the both of them. He swore to her that he would do everything he could to come home in one piece because he adored her and was not stupid enough to make the mistake of leaving her twice.

The mist faded away.

Remus never again saw Teddy.

He never again saw Dora- not that Dora.

At the other side of the bed, Dora swiped tears away from her eyes impatiently. "You know there's no way I listened to you, right? There's no way I stayed there."

"You didn't," Remus agreed. "So Harry tells me. I never saw you again."

"You're seeing me now." Her voice was rough with unshed tears.

He remembered the last time they'd looked into the Pensieve. She'd been adamant that the woman she'd seen hadn't been her. He'd been adamant that she was. Now he wasn't certain. But she seemed to be.

Then he remembered what his father had told him. _I used to look at a photograph of you sitting in your mother's lap. I would look at it and think, oh, there's Remus. As if I hadn't seen you in the flesh that very day. Now, you would have grown and changed even if you'd never been bitten…_

If he and Dora had both lived, they would have grown into different people. Not the people who had said goodbye in Andromeda's kitchen. Not the people who sat quietly with their daughter now. Different, and yet not.

"Teddy was beautiful," said Dora. "Lizzie is beautiful." In the midst of a thousand emotions, Remus felt yet one more: a jolt of pleasure at Dora's tacit acceptance of the nickname. "There are so many paths, so many choices, so many worlds we'll never know and people we'll never meet." Her eyes locked with his. "Which is all the more reason to relish every moment of this path and this world and the people we have here."

"I do," Remus told her. "But I will never forget Teddy."

"Do you think I will?" Tears spilled down her cheeks; he could feel tears on his own cheeks, too. She gestured toward the Pensieve. "Show me again."

* * *

Dora looked wearily at the Pensieve after they had replayed Remus' final memory for the final time.

Then, seeming to decide that time for tears had passed, she dried her eyes and grabbed Remus by the hand. "I've decided," she said.

"Decided what?"

"That Sirius really must be shagging Badeea."

Of all the things Remus had thought she might say, that hadn't been any of them. He choked on his laughter and it was a long moment before he was able to suggest that Dora call Sirius back into the room and ask him.

"He's not still out there, is he?"

Remus shrugged. "I expect that he is. The last time he had a godchild, the state of the war was…" How to explain? Was an explanation needed? "I think he'll have decided to stand guard out of an abundance of caution." He slid from the bed and opened the door.

He had been correct; Sirius and Harry were slouched in a pair of chairs near the door, talking quietly. Their heads shot up and they looked at Remus as one.

"The grandparents are still buying tacky baby gifts," said Sirius.

"Sirius wants to buy her a pink motorcycle jacket," said Harry.

_"Sirius and Harry, come back in here where I can see you,_ " Dora called from behind Remus.

Sirius and Harry jumped to their feet and hastened to obey.

"Is everything all right?" Sirius's gaze swept over Dora, taking in her swollen eyes and flushed cheeks. (Harry, for his part, pressed himself against the far wall of the room. Harry had never done well with crying women.)

Dora grinned. "Remus wanted me to ask you if you were shagging my friend Badeea."

Sirius didn't miss a beat. "Remus should be more careful about his language around small children," he said, his face perfectly expressionless.

"She's a few hours old. She doesn't understand."

"I meant Harry," said Sirius.

Harry rolled his eyes, but suddenly looked much less concerned.

"We still want to know what's going on with you and Badeea," Dora pushed.

Sirius visibly considered his options before, to Remus' slight surprise, choosing to answer. "I've been renovating Grimmauld Place so it can be used as emergency housing for Hogwarts students who don't have a proper home to go to during school holidays. I needed Badeea's skills as an artist. The portraits are all behaving themselves and I don't think a Muggle-born would be permanently scarred by walking inside now. The dark objects have gone to the Ministry, been sold, or been destroyed as appropriate." He smirked thinly. "I melted down the silver goblets and they practically funded the project on their own."

"That's magnificent, Padfoot!" Remus exclaimed.

"Why didn't you tell us?" asked Dora. "We asked why you were hanging around Grimmauld Place often enough."

"I told you when there was something to tell. I didn't know whether it was even possible to turn that… _house_ … into something useful. It was the place I wanted to escape _from_ when I was at school. I didn't know whether it could ever be a place someone could escape _to_. But thanks to Badeea it's almost unrecognizable. Other than leaving the family tree on the wall, of course." He beamed down at Elizabeth. "We'll get her name on when you come over to see it."

"It looks really good," Harry confirmed. "You can open the door and not worry about tripping over a troll's leg footstool or being mauled by doxies."

Sirius glanced sideways at Harry. "I'm just sorry that a place like that didn't exist when you were starting school. I was too late to give you the home you deserved, but-"

"No," Harry interrupted. "You gave me all the home I ever wanted. The last few years might have been… unusual, but I never did that well with a normal family anyway. Speaking of family…"

Harry withdrew a well-folded, well-loved square of parchment from beneath his robes. "I have a present for Elizabeth." He grinned. "Her legacy as the next Marauder."

Remus smiled. He wasn't certain that he'd even seen the map since he and Sirius had asked the Weasley twins to unmask Barty Crouch, but he hadn't doubted that it had found its way back into Harry's hands.

And now Harry had brought it to its next rightful heir.

The room seemed to flood with color and light and potential.

It was one of the happiest days of Remus' life.

**THE END**


End file.
